‘Circles’: How Mac Miller’s Posthumous Album Cast A Halo Around His Legacy

With his background working with commercially successful artists such as Kanye West and Fiona Apple, Brion had not only emboldened Miller to broaden his musical palette, but had also given him the confidence to embrace his natural singing voice and shed any misgivings he may have had about venturing beyond rap music. “I feel like he got more and more comfortable,” Brion said, “and he’d play me more of the stuff he was, frankly, maybe nervous about because it wasn’t straight hip-hop, R&B or pop stuff.”

Tragically, however, in September 2018, just one month after Swimming’s release, Miller died of a drug overdose. All plans to proceed with Circles were put on hold; the hip-hop community went through a period of mourning; and fans clung on to the hope that Miller’s unreleased material might one day be heard. “He was a real writer,” Brion later said, in tribute to Miller, “and any time he wrote something, he hoped it would have an effect, that someone would hear it and understand.”

The recording: “I was trying to figure out the way to change it as little as possible”

Many months later, Brion received a call from Miller’s family, during which they gave him their blessing to finish the project he and Miller had been working on. Brion had already tentatively begun sifting through Miller’s recordings for what would become Circles, listening to some of the tracks on his phone while on a flight. “It flattened me,” he told The New York Times. “Because my feeling was, Yeah, this stuff is as good as I remember.”

The songs had been recorded by Miller using a purpose-built studio in a private office space in Burbank, California. “We basically had an album’s worth of complete songs we had done together,” Brion remembered. “The only things that were left undone were things that we needed to do in a bigger room than I had in Burbank.” To put the finishing touches on the tracks, Brion booked himself in at Conway Recording Studios, in Hollywood, and set about fleshing out the arrangements.

Working with Wendy Melvoin (formerly the guitarist for Prince’s backing band The Revolution) and hotshot session drummer Matt Chamberlain, Brion led the song Good News through a magical osmosis as the trio played along to Miller’s vocal. “I put a marimba on it,” Brion said, “and instantaneously it was what you’re hearing, because the arrangement was already very well mapped out.” Eventually released as Circles’ lead single, on 9 January 2020, Good News would go on to peak at No.17 on the US Hot 100, its somnambulant groove and Miller’s world-weary drawl even reducing the notoriously hard-to-please YouTube critic Anthony Fantano to tears during a reaction video.

Brion, too, would find himself crying during the process of finishing Circles, particularly when revisiting the album’s closing track, Once A Day. “He was clearly trying to sort through his demons,” the producer said of Miller, “and was just being very, very honest, not trying to hide any of it.” Over a long period of time, he carefully added new instrumentation to the recordings, such as vibraphone on the album’s title track and staccato synths on Complicated, to amplify each song’s emotional depth without altering their essence. “I worked painfully slowly,” he later admitted. “I was trying to figure out the way to change it as little as possible.”

The release: “It’s good by anybody’s standards, in any genre”

Released on 17 January 2020, Mac Miller’s sixth album and first posthumous collection represented the rapper’s purest and most introspective work yet. A heartbreaking coda to Miller’s then evolving artistry, Circles delved into its creator’s struggles with self-doubt and his desire to grow, with lyrics made all the more poignant in light of his untimely passing. Musically, too, Circles found Miller’s songwriting abilities fully developing, with hip-hop, R&B, pop and ambient electronica all coursing through his self-probing ruminations.

Peaking at No.3 on the Billboard 200, Circles certainly found its audience, but it’s incredibly hard to listen to the album and not feel overwhelmed by the unbearable loss of Miller’s talent. Though Brion deserves a great deal of credit for weaving sonic coherence out of the recordings, what’s most striking is Miller’s deeply philosophical lyrics. From unpicking his emotional entanglements on Woods to navigating the duality of joy and sorrow on Blue World, here was an artist unafraid to lay his feelings bare.

Elsewhere, Miller accepts responsibility for his past mistakes (That’s On Me) while pinpointing how inherited traits may have shaped his own identity (Hand Me Downs). On Hands he muses upon his destructive habits with self-reproachful candour, and on Surf his voice floats with wistful reverie as he longs for inner peace. When all is said and done, Circles left listeners spiralling as Miller’s words rang out, reminding everyone just how ingeniously his self-expressive lyricism could mesh with a refreshing spirit of musical adventurousness. “It’s good by anybody’s standards, in any genre,” Brion later observed, “this human being expressing themselves well.”

With Miller paring back the fast-paced rapping in favour of slower, soulful crooning, Circles seemed to find him coming to terms with his own frailties in zen-like fashion. But there are often moments of dry humour and self-deprecation to be found, as on Complicated (“Some people say they want to live forever/That’s way too long/I’ll just get through today”) and Hands (“I’m busy trippin’ ’bout some shit that still ain’t even happen yet”). “I feel like the album is a clear picture of somebody with those troubles who is funny and intelligent and was trying to look at them critically,” Brion later concluded. Throughout it all, Miller’s soul continued to glow with blinding clarity.

The legacy: “The only thing I care about is people getting to hear it”

Unlike most posthumous albums, often assembled from demos and studio outtakes, Circles was nearly finished at the time of Miller’s death. As a result, his fans instantly embraced it as a gift completed in the spirit of Miller’s intentions, and it is still rightfully regarded not only as one of the best Mac Miller albums, but also one of the best albums of the 2020s. A deeply moving follow-up to Swimming, Circles emerges from that same creative headspace, the two works all but spiritually conjoined.

Going on to sell more than 570,000 copies in the US, Circles honoured Miller’s vision and reflected the rapper’s unfolding ambition, creativity and humanity. Not only does the record serve as a bittersweet reminder of how greatly Miller had grown as an artist and a musician, but it also pierced listeners’ hearts, its songs unfolding like self-composed eulogies for a talent lost far too soon.

Moving beyond the sonic boundaries of rap, Miller was clearly immersing himself in new sounds, experimenting with fresh ideas and refining his craft to write lyrics that were both deeply personal and universally relatable. By transcending genre, confronting his insecurities and allowing his sense of vulnerability to shape a more honest form of self-expression, Miller ensured that Circles would be a head-spinning listen that only served to leave listeners pondering just how much further he could have travelled.

Few artists can forge such an intimate connection with their listeners through their struggles and triumphs, but Miller candidly invited fans to join him on his quest to quell his neuroses and discover a sense of self-worth. “The only thing I care about is people getting to hear it,” Jon Brion said. “The people who are affected by it have the benefit of being moved by his insight and his articulation. Everything else doesn’t matter.”

Find out where ‘Circles’ ranks among the best 2020s albums.