In many ways, this Mac Miller album is nothing new at all. Balloonerism, the posthumous LP released with permission from the late rapper’s estate, was a project Miller worked on in 2014, around the same time as his Faces mixtape, between studio albums Watching Movies With The Sound Off and GO:OD AM. Plus, many Mac fans have already heard it, or bits of it, with unofficial versions of the album floating around the internet for years.
And yet, there is something so richly important about its 2025 release. Like a missing piece of a puzzle, Balloonerism is a key part of the rapper’s creative development, a creative development that became increasingly agnostic of any musical genre.
