TL;DR:
Csaba traces three Mac Miller albums against three chapters of his own life — the front he put up as a teenager, the reckoning with masculinity that came before his wedding, and the grief that followed his father's death. It's an essay about what hip-hop taught him about asking for help, not a tribute to Mac's biography.
Original photo credit: The cover is a faithful homage that's based on a photo that was taken during the album's original cover image photo shoot. The original photo was taken by Mac's mother, Karen Meyers, in 2013. Pittsburgh, PA. The entire photo shoot was a family project that involved Mac's brother, Miller, as well. Ever since Mac's death, his family has kept the flame glimmering by releasing hidden projects and demos, and nurtured his legacy. Do check how they do it on his website and you should start at infinity.
My image was taken by my wife, and our child helped us too.
I think I didn't cry for ages when I was a kid. Not that I can remember what I've eaten for lunch last week, but I cannot recall a single moment before my father left this plane. The absence of tears was surprising as those who know me know that when it rains it pours. Yes, I'm a man who cries proudly when emotions flow over sometimes.
I had a debate with my father about music. He believed hip-hop didn't make sense. In his defense, he was a jazz saxophone player and never learned to speak a foreign language, and at the time of our debate, the Hungarian rap scene was mostly about robbing banks. He had a point, yet I refused to budge.
Now, almost two decades later, I'm making my case.
I believe hip-hop has the power to transcend literature, or any other art form sometimes.
With the inclusion of music, it can build an additional layer to an already complex world (lyricism) but with the constraint that one song must stand on its own and make sense in under four minutes. With the limit of time, there's no chance to describe a single tree over multiple verses. They must include the listener and make them think for themselves.
I'll show you three of Mac's albums and what they mean to me.
K.I.D.S. from 2010
The good ol' days of high school. No promotion pressure, no bills to pay, no girlfriend, no gray hairs, just a bunch of teenagers who were on cloud nine when their parents let them escape the burden of doing homework or chores on Saturday evening. "Just don't drink too much, mkay?" they begged us. Well, we didn't.
The plan was simple. Pack speakers, laptop and the longest extension cord in a suitcase, deliver everything to a house parents left unguarded. Then have at it.
We spent entire evenings around our small tables with a handful of friends, turning knobs and playing with the fader to call ourselves appointed DJs. Outside from dusk till dawn, even if it was burning hot or freezing cold. I witnessed more sunrises than I could count and could achieve the miracle of remaining single during the entire tenure. I'm still in awe of my unnatural abilities.
But I couldn't care less. I fell deeply in love with drum and bass, alternative rock, dance, but most importantly, hip-hop.
With our friends, we became the pulse of secretly organized house parties where I was on a mission to popularize Mac's music all by myself. This album was a great help in my crusade, particularly Nikes on My Feet. Around that time, I still played basketball and I lived like my personality was based on a videoclip. We live and we learn. It was a front though, a front that portrayed a laid-back, easy-going semi-professional basketball player who was good at smiling. I shook hands with everyone from sophomores to seniors; knew somebody at every table I looked at.
What none of my friends or guests saw was how much I was struggling underneath.
My grades were declining, I started to hate basketball and my team, had almost no contact with my parents or my sister. Back then the term burnout didn't exist in our universe; I believe I wasn't. I just catapulted myself emotionally to the stratosphere to handle the pressure, and on paper, I could. I took three different language exams one after another in two different languages before all my peers, spent weekday evenings in practice and remained witty when teachers tried to hold me accountable. Then my father passed away and I quietly lost it.
I had no idea if I should ask for help. It was not commonplace in the family; everybody was soft like titanium, so I tried to keep my head above the water alone. I had an unlikely support though, the track Poppy from the album. When I couldn't hold it anymore, I played this song like a secret shelter where I could retreat to let my emotions flow, just a little.
I didn't know how to ask for help. I didn't know I could. I thought it was a weakness, as I believed, though boys don't cry. I kicked back, relaxed, while my soul gently wept.
The Divine Feminine from 2016
Mac's studio albums arrived between 2011 and 2018, and I got lost around the first, Blue Slide Park, in 2011. It was new and weird, not the same feel-good mixtape as K.I.D.S. I admit I skipped two releases between that and this. This immediately felt different, something that almost didn't even resemble Mac's earlier work.
If you're still reading and didn't start to listen to any of the albums, start with this.
This album is tender, almost R'n'B-ish. And this is a compliment I couldn't believe I'd say when I first listened to it. During the first listening, I started to look around to understand what happened to the guy jumping around rapping about Nikes. I quickly found out he fell in love with Ariana Grande and I was like "good for you man" and understood everything noddingly. Around this time was when I met my now wife, and I could see how I could create a very similar album deeply in love only if I knew how to create music.
For more than a decade, I thought I should be like granite. I was sold on the idea that strong men, who know all the answers and are confident all the time, are what the world needs. To not show weakness. A leftover from the idea of men don’t cry.
I grew up around rugged women.
All my man ancestors left the living behind before I could crack open a beer with them. I had no idea what healthy manhood looked like. I'm a millennial, so most of the examples included the idea that they should earn a living and remain faithful. That was it, those were my travel essentials when I embarked on the journey of how to be a man.
The women around me had to harden for survival.
My whole identity tripped. I was anything but masculine, yet everything that had a feminine energy in me had a rough masculine undertone to it.
What a mess it was.
The dynamic led me in my relationships to try to be the cavalier, only to feel lonely and deep resentment when people didn’t bring my horse and sword to me.
You can imagine how hectic my arguments were. I knew how to connect emotionally, but my ego demanded that I indeed communicate my needs, so I got stuck in my own head to try to win every argument cognitively.
This album helped me to see there's a connection between the two sides, a connection I didn't see in my life prior to that. Feminine and masculine are not mutually exclusive; they are forever connected. The power lies in that connection, and my way forward became establishing that connection so I could move between the sides when I needed to.
Circles from 2020
We were still living in a tiny studio apartment with my soon-to-be wife. By the time I opened my eyes in the morning, she was always long gone, for she worked across the city. My morning routine included showering and blasting music she didn't really like. Upon pulling up Spotify, Good News by Mac was at the top of the list. I thought I was hallucinating, hit play and immediately teared up. I set up a one-song repeat, sat on the side of the bed and listened to it four times, fighting my tears. The world ceased to exist, and my brain cued the wonder on deck 2 about how it was possible.
Back then I was entirely immune to social media. What's considered daily consumption today often meant the entire week in those days. Besides, the album's release happened while I was busy dreaming. I didn't know that the family decided to release the album posthumously. I didn't know that Mac was working on Circles in parallel to be a companion album to Swimming, expanding on the original idea in a different style, making it a concept of "swimming in circles."
I spent my entire workday under my headphones listening to the album, falling deeply in love with it. To this day, I still think this is his best album and is the most emotionally saturated. I feel sad thinking that he couldn't witness its release.
One song in particular means the act of release to me from the album. It's Everybody.
During the summer of '21 after our wedding, a former coworker's husband died in a fatal parachute accident. He was a trained professional, jumped over twenty thousand times. That day the parachute didn't open, nor the safety. His widow remained here with their child. Their entire life changed in a blink. I only met him once but grieved him for weeks, partly because months earlier, COVID took my grandmother too. She could never witness my marriage or me becoming a father.
When my grief peaked on a summer evening, I set Everybody on repeat, sat under the stars and watched planes fly by leaving trails in the night sky.
To me, the album's existence means that only the living can cheat death, but those who remain should not focus too much on mortality. They should turn toward saying yes to life after giving space to grief.
Circles helped me to see and accept that life is not fair, and I started to stop fighting it. The boy who thought it would be better if he showed strength when he crumbled inside started to realize that it's better to ask for help.
Outro
If I could have one last dinner with my father I’d ask him what he’d like to listen to in the background. I have a feeling he’d choose Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, Pearl Jam or some lesser known Hungarian blues. But then after his record finished, I’d play Circles. I’d tell him everything about these stories in greater detail and how I felt. I’d prove to him that Mac’s music was more meaningful than how he thought about the shallowness of hip-hop.
I’d admit that it wasn’t the lyrics alone that made an emotional difference for me, but rather that his music piqued my interest to work on the connection of my masculinity and femininity and my dance with death.
I’d also tell him that I love him.
Full disclaimer:
My coaching is intended to support self-awareness, emotional resilience, personal growth, and meaningful life change. It is not a substitute for addiction treatment, therapy, psychiatric care, or medical support. If you are experiencing substance dependence, compulsive behaviors, self-harm, or other mental health concerns, I encourage you to work with an appropriately qualified healthcare professional. Where appropriate, coaching can complement professional treatment, but it cannot replace it. My role is not to diagnose, treat, or cure addiction, but to support clients in building a life aligned with their values, goals, and wellbeing after addiction has been stabilized.
It’s perfectly okay to ask for support. You don’t have to figure everything out on your own. While I believe everyone is their own best expert, I’m also a big believer in asking for help to create change together. It’s comforting to have someone by our side as we go through transitions. If you’re feeling motivated to expand your comfort zone and curious about how I can support you on your journey, let’s talk.
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