Balloonerism: Mac Miller’s posthumous album ‘raw and unpolished’

Mac Miller, real name Malcolm James McCormick, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and started making music at school.

His debut album, Blue Slide Park, was the first independently released record to top the Billboard 200 chart in 16 years and all of his later albums followed the same path to the top five in the US.

He wrote Balloonerism between labels in 2014 and producer Eric Dan, who worked with Mac since he was a teenager, tells Newsbeat he was “just starting to come into his own”.

“That period was like a creative renaissance for him,” he says. “He was a creation machine.”

Josh says so many projects were started in that time but Balloonerism was among the ones that came closest to release, with Mac even getting to the stage of commissioning artwork.

While Circles was “in pretty rough shape” when he died and finished off by producers, Eric says Balloonerism is largely untouched.

“We made a conscious decision to keep things as they were and not go back and ‘fix’ mistakes, tune things or add anything.

“The rough edges were part of its charm and highlighted where Mac was creatively at that time.”

Josh describes the result of leaving in those imperfections as an album that’s “raw and emotional”, even “extremely haunting” in the context of Mac’s death.

“Once you start pulling everything apart and dusting it off, it starts to lose its magic,” Josh says.

“It’s beautiful to release an album that’s not so scoured of imperfection, that’s authentic and real.”