![]() “Dang!” and “Stay” play back-to-back and examine loss of love close up. Across its 10 songs, it observes love as a part of the human experience without forcing any beliefs on the listener, dealing mostly in the building blocks of feelings. The project started as an EP, but it became a full album as Miller continued to flesh out its ideas. It’s worth noting that The Divine Feminine has the fewest tracks of any Mac Miller album and that it is the clearest, most concise record of his career that’s a correlation, not a coincidence. The Divine Feminine reins in Mac Miller’s wide-ranging taste, bonding aesthetics and fully realizing his artistry. It’s heavily indebted to the growing fusion jazz rap movement with contributions from pianist Robert Glasper, Brainfeeder bass maestro Thundercat, and trumpeter Keyon Harrold, sometimes appearing in the record’s margins, but usually as full-fledged performers (the first two also played on To Pimp a Butterfly). Paak himself on tracks like “ Dang!” flecks of the Social Experiment’s juke and jazz (especially on “Stay”) even the electro-fused alt R&B of a producer like Kaytranada. Paak’s Malibu, flexed into with help from Dâm-Funk and. The Divine Feminine has very specific set of sonic reference points: the rich and heavy funk of Anderson. He even gets noted lothario Ty Dolla $ign to play a gentleman (or at least as close to that as he gets) on “Cinderella,” which is no easy task.Īs a group, led by Miller’s pronounced vision, they forge the lover’s guide to the universe, painting in tiny brush strokes from a warm and familiar tonal palette. Students from Juilliard played strings on the album, and they accent the arrangements well. Miller and Kendrick move in tandem on the epic closer “God Is Fair, Sexy Nasty” without any competitive tension. Cee-Lo Green lends his unmistakable vocals and energy to “We,” which simmer just above the surface of crisp drum kicks. The fingerprints of his sonic soulmate Ariana Grande are all over the record: backup vocals, feature vocals, voiceover work, and her positive influence on him shows. The album interlocks a diverse array musicians without losing the main thematic thread. He does it all with just a little help from his friends. But this is his most nuanced release, a record that forgoes personal narrative and somehow reveals his individuality in the process. There aren’t any lyrical exercises or overthought exhibitions of verse structure and execution, no plays to prove himself a rapper’s rapper-frankly there’s almost more singing than rapping. There aren’t any plays to satisfy or ingratiate a specific subgroup of listeners. Yet, The Divine Feminine is by far the most settled he's ever been. ![]() He’s gotten more comfortable in his own skin with each release, but that threatened to be an issue here, given the title. Mac Miller has put in hard work establishing himself as a Serious Rapper since the release of his emotionally and sonically flat debut Blue Slide Park, putting on his fair share of wordplay showcases and aligning himself with the right people since his sprawling breakout Watching Movies With the Sound Off in 2013, but much of that work came off as pandering or, worse still, overly earnest. It’s easily his most intoxicating release yet, an odyssey of soulful compositions paring down his expansive and eclectic soundboard from the last few years into something distinctly cozy and pleasant. It peels back and exposes the many layers of love-romantic, schmaltzy, sensual, carnal, wilting. It’s about contact and togetherness, closing the gap between people about being in unison and growing apart, and all the stages in between. “I want people to love to this record and realize they can love to it.” There’s a very real connective tissue to these ideas of space and intimacy. “I want people to put on the record and it’s a date in itself,” he told i-D. He’s mentioned playing the record for a couple and slowly observing them cut the distance between each other in a room as it progresses. When Miller talks about The Divine Feminine, he considers the universe, the distance between persons, and deciphering love on an ideological level.
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