Rapper Mac Miller is set to perform at the Rhythm and Vines music festival. Photo / Brick Stowell
Rapper Mac Miller is set to perform at the Rhythm and Vines music festival. Photo / Brick Stowell
Rapping and partying, partying and rapping. After a tough few years, Mac Miller is living the dream. He talks to Chris Schulz.
Mac Miller has had a great year. No wonder he's hungover.
"I've been getting pretty drunk," admits the Pittsburgh-born, New York-based rapper who'll finish 2015 with a headlining set at Gisborne-based festival Rhythm & Vines.
Stuck in his tour bus in Nevada in the middle of a lengthy US tour,Miller has been celebrating the success of his latest album, the expansive GO:OD AM, a little too hard lately. But he's got the perfect hangover cure.
"Watching movies is my pre-show ritual. I'm currently watching Mr Woodcock. It's a very inspirational film ... it's a good hangover cure," he laughs about the 2007 Seann William Scott vehicle, cutting out over a poor phone line.
Despite his aching head, croaky voice and dodgy taste in movies, Miller sounds jovial - a far cry from the past few years, with the 23-year-old finding himself struggling to follow up the success of 2013's Watching Movies with the Sound Off, stuck in the studio making nine discarded albums and building a hefty addiction to the allergy drug promethazine.
In an extensive interview with Grantland, Miller said he got clean after drunk-dialling Rick Rubin and pleading for help. "For two to three years, I was just numb ... I was crying every day," he told the website.
He released one record during this time, the introspective mixtape Faces, which received rave reviews but cast Miller in a different light , his Eminem-aping shock rap schtick replaced by insular rhymes over minimal, sluggish beats.
Now, after cleaning up, shifting to New York, and getting a pet cat, Miller is a different person. And that's reflected in his music, with GO:OD AM's expansive sound shifting bases, adding the summery soul of Brand Name and the jaunty tempo of 100 Grandkids into the mix.
"It's up-tempo," he says. "I guess it's more positive but I don't view it as this super positive album. I kind of sound like a different Mac Miller on every record." Fans have taken to his new look, with Miller says it's been his most successful album yet.
"Performing is actually the best way to test out how an album is going and I've never actually had this reaction from fans. It's been going awesome."
*Warning: This song may contain explicit language*
He hasn't curbed his partying ways. Miller's fondest memory of New Zealand was his midday set for the Big Day Out in 2014.
"The Big Day Out was hands down one of the best times of my life. We'd have one show a week. We'd go to a different place, party all week and do the show. It was like time off. It was one of the greatest times ever."
Will anything be different this time around? It doesn't sound like it. "I can't wait ... we'll party," he says.
Let's hope he's still got Rick Rubin's number, just in case.
The Rhythm & Vines timetable and map
Who: Rapper Mac Miller Where and when: Rhythm & Vines, Waiohika Estate, Gisborne, January 29-31 Also: New album GO:OD AM, out now
