Dissect - Dissecting Mac Miller's Faces

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

S9 co-writer Camden Ostrander joins Cole to discuss their approach to Swimming In Circles before dissecting Faces, Mac's 2014 mixtape that recently hit streaming services. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome everyone to a special episode of Dissect. I am your host, Cole Kushna. And today I'm joined with the co-writer of season nine. He was also the co-writer of season seven on Because the Internet. He is one Camden Ostrander. How are you doing, man? I'm good. How you doing, Cole? I'm doing all right. I'm excited to talk Mac with you. I'm excited about the new season. Seems to be going pretty well. Got some really great words of encouragement from listeners. It's been really positive feedback. So it's always a good feeling to. get the season off the ground and share, you know, what we've been working on for many, many months now. Yeah, it's been a while. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to talk about faces in a little bit. Obviously, that just came to streaming services. So it's kind of like, at least personally, I kind of feel like I rediscovered the album, just having it readily available. So we're going to talk about phases later, but we're going to start with kind of a general conversation around season nine and kind of our approach to swimming in circles. before we get there, let's take it back to,

I kind of want to hear your kind of personal journey or relationship, I guess, with Mac Miller's music. I'll open the conversation up to anywhere you want to take it, but maybe start with what you first remember about Mac Miller, first time hearing him and kind of the journey from there. I mean, so for me, kids came out, and I was in, like, eighth grade, so I was a young one. And for me, when Mac Miller came out,

It was like, okay, this is what the cool older kids are listening to, was kids and was like a Blue Slide Park. I do kind of remember, like, trying to listen to Blue Slide Park one time and not quite liking it, but also being like, but all the older kids, they all say this is cool. So this is probably cool. I just don't get it or something like that. That's how it was for me, at least. And then I honestly, like, just didn't, I didn't check in with Mack for a long time. watching movies would have been the next time, but that was like the same day as Jesus. And like Wolf had just come out. So I was definitely like listening to Wolf on repeat.

So that I don't know, I missed it. And I didn't get to Mac until like Good AM came out. You know, because again, I'd always been like, oh, Max for other folks. I guess I just don't listen to him. But somebody probably like it was like before a game in college for soccer. Like somebody probably played Good A.m. in the locker room. And I think it was Break the Law, specifically was a song, if I'm remembering everything, right? I was like, oh, wait a minute, this is actually Mac? This is like Mac Miller?

The Blue Side Park, that guy? This is him? And so then I was like, okay, I got to go look this up on my own time. And that's when kind of I went back through the catalog and started just like following everything he was doing off then. Divine Feminine when that came out, I thought that was amazing. If folks remember me from season seven in the Gambino stuff, like, he did Divine, Mac did Divine Feminine when Gambino did.

awakened my love. They were both doing the singing at the same time. It felt very like equivalent. And Dang also is probably, that's like the best song when Dang came out. I was just like, that was the best thing ever. That's like, yeah. So I was very into all that. Swimming came out. And that was amazing. That was when I first started like teaching. So like, I was like, okay, I'm my own independent adult right now. I finally, I have a real job. I'm out of school. this is a great album to listen to like every day on the way to and from work and all that stuff. So that's kind of how it went with Mac.

Yeah, that's interesting. Mine's a similar journey actually because I came late to Mac. I want to say I heard probably as bigger songs off of the first couple of mixtapes and albums. And wasn't for me at that time. It wasn't the music that I was particularly into at that time. And, you know, everyone falls very much.

him to like first impressions right so you make your assumption about mac who mac miller is um with those early projects and then kind of just for me it was kind of like tuned him out just didn't really make it uh a point to like check him out after that too much um i've said this on the show a couple times probably but you know the early 2000 or the early 2010s is kind of when i went to school for classical music and once i got there i had so much catching up to do that i fully immersed myself into that world and didn't really listen to anything else. Really fell off the map of popular music at that time. We'd hear about the bigger stuff, obviously, but like something like a Mac Miller,

I wasn't going to be on my radar at that time. But Good A.M., and especially Divine Feminine, is like when I was like, oh, this is much different than I remember MacMiller being, particularly Divine Feminine because he was working with a lot of the same people, Kendrick Lamar was on Tipa Butterfly. And obviously that's the, that's an album that I really love and respect. And hearing kind of the similarities

between those projects, I remember being like, oh, he's, he's going this route. And so kind of went back and rediscovered his older stuff. But swimming was the one. I mean, swimming for me was personally when I was like, oh, he found it. Like, he got it. He did like everything built to this moment.

And I just remember being so impressed by the musicianship. Because, you know, obviously Matt can rap. That was pretty much clear from day one that he had a pretty raw and then polished talent as he went on. But that was never really in question. The musicianship, which now realizing and even studying his life more, like, was there from day one. But I feel like it was really crystallized with swimming with the assistance of John Bryan, who was also one of my favorite musicians. of all time before swimming, much before swimming.

So that's when I really fell, fell like, you know, quote unquote deeply in love with his music. And obviously then months later, tragedy happened. But yeah, so I would say that's my general, general, it's funny because the more I think about it, the more it's at least for me personally and maybe even kind of objectively, it's kind of similar to Tyler, where he came out this one, one. way, very young, and kind of got branded as this thing. You know, he was kind of shock rap. Mac Miller was kind of frat wrap.

And it took folks a while to kind of realize there more than that. It also took them personally, you know, some work to get themselves to that next level. But the raw talent was always there. Yeah, so I guess when I tapped you for this season, maybe this was like a year ago now, something like that. Yeah. It was a while ago. We started with a pilot of woods, actually, from circles, and you wrote that.

Very beautiful. And then we signed you up for, to take on most of the lyrical analysis and kind of research for swimming and circles. So walk me through the initial kind of phase of your studies and approaching, like, how you're going to go about kind of analyzing this album. I mean, for me, it was like, when we first talked about it, I started listening to like both of the albums every day and doing that and then just slowly building up the interviews. That's kind of, that's probably what most of the research I think consists of, at least for me, like I spend so much time, even on my own like free time, just watching interviews. That's like I want to hear people discuss these things.

I want to hear them talk about the behind the scenes or what's going on, what's influencing them. So I think now for Mac, I've got like a YouTube playlist of like 300 videos because there's just so many for him at least. There's just so much content that was created. One of the challenges, I guess this season might be in how most of those interviews go out or in like how to process them.

Because there is a lot to consider with just how media treated him and how he kind of gets talked to in interviews. and then, you know, how Mac's doing. The different times of Mac's life, he's at different stages, he's going to be acting or saying different things in these interviews. So there's a couple of layers, it's kind of process. So, like, the beginning part was me really familiarizing myself

with how Mac was kind of timeline-wise and what he would talk about and what he would repeat and what things would kind of stay the same. And that was a lot of the research. And then just going into the music, trying to go through the back catalog a lot because I think we both talked about this as far as

realizing the lack of respect for the old work and how good it was. And I mean, I listened to All of Mac. I loved all Mac stuff. But like when you really break down stuff and you see swimming in circles, he's been talking about these ideas for a very long time.

Swimming is on the high life. Like the 2009 mixtape, he's using that metaphor. I mean, like he's been doing this. He's been developing these ideas. He always was working on this stuff. And we saw that. So the ability to go back and look at it all kind of almost from a bird's eye view,

but just like that retrospective aspect was really, I think, helpful and nice. So we've been able to like make those connections, I think. Right. Yeah, it's interesting with the interviews because when I do, like you carry the load this season in terms of research. But on prior seasons, what I would be doing that. you know, Mac is probably the most prolific in terms of available, like interviews being available. There's just so much he was very open and seemed more willing than like a Kendrick or even a Kanye or certainly like a Beyonce.

You can tell you like makes time for everybody. And it's amazing to see because like sometimes you look at these interviews and you can tell he is so tired or he's so worn out. Or there's some other thing going on in the background even in a few where like, oh, Mac should be doing that. there's a couple people that are interested in Mac for activities afterwards that want to talk to him, but you see the interview going on. It appears selfless, really. Right, yeah. And I wonder what that would be, or why that would be. Maybe that's just a personality trait.

He never seemed to complain about interviews too much. Which a lot of artists get to that place where certainly by swimming time, like he didn't really need to be doing interviews. And maybe even before then. But he always made himself available, which kind of speaks to his transparency in general. But, yeah, no, a lot of the thought that we kind of talked about going into the season was like, obviously the death hangs over it all, you know. But we had conversations about how to, you know, I guess we addressed it early with season one or episode one and kind of just, you know, it's hard to separate swimming and certainly circles from the death. kind of acknowledging that early and then just letting the rest of the season being more of a celebration or really just how we approach any other season right like just respecting honoring the work and really just trying to listen and learn from these great albums but then i would say there's been some tough moments um i guess i'm i'm curious to know so far we're not done with the season we're just getting on to the last couple episodes of swimming right now what what sticks out for you in terms of being the most difficult episode to get through?

Yeah, this season has been like a, I wasn't, I don't think I was ready. I don't know. Like I jumped in and then along with all that research came a lot of struggle. I mean, I think all of us probably have people we connect with people for whatever reasons, right? When I think about Mac, there's like two people I know very well who I connect with this story. And like, so it's not just Mac. It becomes then a personal exploration within both myself and with thinking about these people that I love and care about. So that's been just on my mind and it's been a heavy experience for me what I'm like grateful for because I think all of us deal with this.

I think a lot of audience response we got was really nice about just how emotional and how many connections everybody made with it. because you have this artist who so honestly showed so much becomes an individual icon for like a universal feeling in many ways, which is great. As far as like an episode that I mean, I think you probably know, like self-care like tore me up. There's something about self-care that haunts me. Like still, like the episode is done.

I had to kind of wash my hands a bit of it. Something about it so haunts. me and feels very difficult to deal with just in subject matter, the music video, and even the instrumental. I think you explained to me, because you like broke down the music for me, like, this is why this beat is sounding different to you, or this why it feels this way, but there's something unsettling about it to me. And I think we talk about an episode, but like part of it is we're not going to, we can't take care of ourselves in so many ways. Because you have this hopeful reading of it, like self-cares.

important if we can handle ourselves will be good but then I think also in reading the song you wonder if it's even possible and that I mean for me was like there's many spirals that came out of that you know yeah yeah yeah I mean even reading what you wrote was super powerful but I could tell specifically in that episode I could feel I could feel that and it came through in the writing which I think part of it's I mean we left a lot of that in and I think that's kind of important to show. Because it mirrors, it seems to mirror exactly what he was doing in the song, you know, and trying to like, what is this idea of self-care?

Is it even possible? And then the cyclical nature of, you might be able to care for yourself one day, but the next day, maybe not so much, right? And like, that's kind of the, that's the whole concept of swimming in circles, is that we can do fine for a while, but it doesn't mean forever. And so a lot of the album is. And, you know, the concept seems to be just trying to find peace within everything, you know, not just fleetingly searching for the good or happiness, like, whatever that even is, right? Like, it was more about being present in both the good and bad, trying to find it peace and both, you know, sides of the coin.

But, yeah, self-care was definitely one for me that was difficult. even just parsing through kind of what you wrote and then kind of like trying to flesh out those ideas even more. Yeah, I think I was a difficult one. There's a line, someone saved me for myself, which is like broke me. When we got to that line, it absolutely broke me, which we should probably stop talking about it. The issue is like we're trying, because like we're also, we're just, we're processing the work. We're not the people who made it. Right.

We're not that. But their work is obviously in a way that impacts us and millions of people in such a way. And so thinking about it and breaking it down and trying to talk about why it does that has been a difficult process. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And there's also like a mental block sometimes where I don't, like sometimes I can't write. I don't want to talk about these things all the time. Right. You know? So like there's some points where I'll get to something and I literally can't write another word. which feels dramatic and stupid to say, but it happened, you know? No, when you live, I mean, it is an intense experience. Like, when you live these records for, you've been writing since January, so you've been really, really steeped in it for almost an entire year.

It's intense. Like, I've been doing this for, I guess, almost five years now. And obviously, it depends on the album. But I would say this is probably, well, Kendrick goes some dark places. But this one feels where Kendrick, you can kind of separate it because it's so much a concept and so much of a narrative. It's almost like you can detach from it a little bit in that way and just kind of look at it like a story. Mack, it's like the concept, and he said this, it's like the theme isn't, it's not a concept record per se. It's like he said like, I'm going to be as true to myself as possible.

And the themes will naturally sprout from me just being completely honest. And it's very true. And when you're steeped in his honesty and he's showing you absolutely the dark and the light, yeah, you're going to get, it's going to get heavy. And especially if you're really, I mean, as you are, have been really wanting to understand. And like when you're giving yourself over to a work like this, and again, I'm kind of speaking from experience, yeah, you start to like live it. Like you're steeped in those emotions and like there's and you're kind of wearing them or something. There's an obsessive quality to it as well when you like doing it this long. Yeah.

And then you do all of this up against the face of the complete lack of any solid answer that is he passed away. Right. That is the world took him. Right. Right. So there is no resolution. there's nothing to end on.

Exactly. Yeah, there's no there's no happy ending, right? Right. And you can't force it. And that's another thing I think we had to kind of work through in terms of how we were going to treat the death

and talk about it because there is a temptation or at least for me to like, maybe justifies the wrong word, but like make sense of it. To find meaning in it. You want to find a moral, but you can't. It's just not. It's like there's no value to any of it.

Yeah. Right. So I think coming, it's funny because it kind of just came back to, you know, we just aired what's the use. And before that, her feelings with it is what it is, the Thundercat, you know, kind of saying that him and Mack shared. And Thundercat saying that's kind of the ultimate conclusion that he came to. And it's kind of the conclusion we came to somewhat independently, although it was there right in front of us the whole time. and we were kind of riding through that to get to that spot. And I think anyone who has dealt with death personally,

I mean, obviously, Mac's death affect everyone, but if it's a family member, if you've had to deal with that, like you know there is really not, it is what it is. Like, there's no, there's nothing to kind of take away from it. Right. So let's talk about something else. Let's talk about it. The fun faces.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that covers the approach. Anything else that you wanted to say before we transition into faces about the season at all? That this has felt like a really, I feel very grateful to have had the experience. And I think everybody will. And that's really great. Yeah. Yeah, you've been doing an incredible job.

You did a great job in season seven. You're doing, I think you're doing an even better job this time around. Well, thanks so much, cool. that's not why I say it but yeah yeah you know okay so let's transition to faces obviously it came to streaming services

this past Friday which was great I'm definitely fall victim to not listening to mixtapes probably as much as I should just because of the convenience of them or the inconvenience of them I'm not going to put shit on my phone anymore

but it's like just how it is yeah so faces I hadn't listened to for years I listened to it before Friday. Like I made it a point to, you know, get prep for this and another podcast we did. The Ringer Music Show, we talked about faces there. But I really steeped myself in faces this past couple weeks. Really, really, really have kind of grown to really love this album. But before we get into, I kind of want to set up just briefly where Mac was.

Because I think we kind of forget that one, he was 22. when riding faces, which just baffles me. I think about myself when I'm 22, and I'm just like, how are you this great? How are you this insight? How do you get all that together? How do you make all that? Yeah.

But he had lived, up to that point, he lived a very full life. So by the time he was 22 and started on faces, he already had two studio albums. First, Blue Side Park went number one. Movies with a sound off went number three. he had 10 mixtapes including the three before kids he had two EPs and one live album

he was going on I think he was doing like 200 shows a year he had toured the UK or Europe in general I think he did a headlining tour and a support tour for little Wayne he had already recorded two seasons of a reality TV show and again all this before age 22 and so this is kind of where he was at. It seems like, you know, this place he called the sanctuary, which was the studio in the pool house, right, of his mansion, became, you know, it seemed like, and from everyone that talked about the album, like, this was the first time he really just got to, like, be in one place and wasn't touring, wasn't on the move and just really, really got to sit and compose music every day, all day, multiple, without sleeping sometimes. So yeah, let me, what are your general thoughts about faces, maybe when you first heard it, and just as you were kind of rediscovering it recently with the season and it coming to streaming?

I mean, when I first heard, I'm sure I heard Diablo at like functions, you know, but again, I wasn't with Mac. I wasn't like looking into everything until good a.m. So probably like listen to faces like once then. I thought it was really cool. It was like, yeah, Diablo is the greatest, is one of the best function songs ever. Let's keep it that way. But yeah, it wasn't on streaming. So I would listen to it once in a while. Like when I thought about Mac, if I tried to rank his work at like the beginning

of when I started writing this, it wasn't as high as it is now in my own mind. I've definitely spent a lot of time with it writing this season. There's a lot of thematic connections with swimming in circles between this and that work. Yeah. Which has been, you know, great to pull out. but also just like there's definitely like a period of like a month where it was like I was listening to faces more than swimming in circle like yeah yeah I was listening to this one more um yeah it's like and I feel like first for me I'm like I look back I'm like how did I miss it you know a little bit yeah um but it's incredible that he's doing all this at 22 that this is happening in 2014 that he's doing it so independently like it's it's an independent release it's like free from all this stuff it's yeah

Yeah, it's amazing that he's able to get all this out. Yeah, that's something I didn't mention, too. He just left Rostom Records, which was a Pittsburgh label, independent label. I don't, was, I think he, does he say remember music on faces? He says remember music. They're, like, putting it together. And he also, like, mentions a couple record executives that are, like, going to talk to him. I think, like, one by name.

Yeah. He calls out in a song, right? And so it was before he got with Warner, though. Right. So he was free from, seems like he was just free. like in the anecdotes that you read of his friends and the people that were there, they all kind of speak about this freedom, you know, not having a label, being able to put out whatever he wanted, having money and just being able to sit and compose.

And I definitely think that kind of comes through or definitely comes through in the kind of sprawling nature of the work. You know, it's a long project, 24 songs. just you really get steeped in that world that he created in the sanctuary. So let's get into, well, so I guess we should preface our discussion a little bit with what we're going to do in terms of a song-by-song discussion. So those that don't know, I didn't know this until recently. So when you originally downloaded faces as a mixtape, you had to make Mac a sandwich. A Sammy.

Make me a Sammy. A Sammy. I just noticed today that the Ms are italicized, which I'm guessing Mac Miller. Yeah, yeah. So, which I love. I love that how silly that was. I think it again speaks to the kind of freedom that he had at this time where he was just doing whatever he want, whatever he thought was funny.

So you had to build him. It was just like a very basic. Like Webkins game or something like Pop Topeka. you're dragging some ingredients over. Right, yeah. Penguin or something, yeah. Yeah, you literally, there's a scroll bar with different ingredients, and you just literally make him a sandwich,

and then after the sandwich is made, that's when you get to download it. So we thought we had honored that with a sandwich draft. We're basically going to build a sandwich out of songs from faces. This is a great idea. This is kind of working. It's totally great and totally corny, and it's everything Mac, you know, was.

So we're going to honor that. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to do our, the first and last sandwich draft. Sweet. All right, welcome back to dissect. And we are going to start the faces sandwich draft. So we have four categories.

We have the bread. We got the special sauce. Can't give a straight face. Yeah. We got the cheese and we got the meat or the protein. I'm not sure. Are you vegetarian? No. Okay, so we're going to meat. I'm going to meat. All right.

So first off, bread. What's your bread song? So from bread. Actually, what's your interpretation of bread? So bread is, well, my interpretation goes with the title of the, I picked inside outside. All right? So we've got the inside of faces on the outside of the sandwich as the bread. And Mac was free.

I'm thinking this is an iceberg lettuce. Okay. So if you're keeping track of the ingredients at home, if you want to make this at home, iceberg lettuce is what we're using for the sandwich bread. This is one of the best openers to any project ever in my brain. In the opening line, okay, I'm going to, the opening line to me, me is one of the most impactful opening lines of any project. It has to do with personal like how I read it because of my life experience, but also with all the smack stuff.

And I think we talk about this, and we'll talk about this in an episode and we'll get into it. But the opening line of I should have died already being the beginning of the project. I don't know if you've had this call. I have had a near-death experience. Like when I was 19, a nurse told me, I can't believe you're alive right now. Like, that happened to me, right? There's a lot of stuff that happens with your life after that and how you perceive everything. You can think of it as, okay, I could have died. Now I get to live life free, wonderful.

Look at the second chance. This is great. You also could look at it as, like, it's a burden. Like, you could have, yeah, we could have been free. I could have been gone. I might not have had to deal with all the rest of this stuff. So for me personally, after that experience and then listening to this, like, it just sets in so much of everything that Mac is talking about. And it does with swimming as well.

So for me, you know, that's an amazing opening. And so that's my iceberg lettuce, you know? But I also like that this album has so many of those great opening lines. If I think about like conceptually, I'm thinking Mac did this, like, the opening line is the face of the song. It's the first impression of the song. We got all these faces. He's like, I got to have all these great opening lines. I think he also did that with the samples.

It was not all of them made it to streaming. But if you go back and like, there's so many samples that open songs, who's like interacting with all these faces of the people in the samples and then him, his own selves on all the songs. It's for me really interesting. I love that song so much. It's very special to me. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a great, great, great opener. I agree. One thing I picked up from the book of Mac, for those that don't know Donna Claire Chesman is releasing the book of Mac which was supported

by Mac's family and next week right? I think so and she's going to be on the show we're going to have her on next week on Dissect but

Josh Berg in the book of Mac we got an advance copy he said that yeah he said that Mac freestyled everybody want to be God besides God he want to be like us

like he freestyled that line that's great yeah Incredible. He's got the other bars on this. Oh, I got to point something else at. He says, try and tell you that it ain't real. And then the ad libid his faces. So we're already talking about identity, talking about how it's not real in all these facades.

And then he says, find that Yeti. Oh, faces, I'm that Yeti. So like, first of up, the way he screams that is absolutely incredible. There's so much great energy, right? And we're going to talk about this throughout. But like, he's the snow monster. That deals. That's such a clever way of getting the drugs.

reference of the cocaine already. He's that Yeti. That's wild, that he said it. And he says later, like, the cocaine ether, the strange creature, like, this is so much of what's happening on faces. It's like electric, the beginning of this album. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's a great sample. Great instrumental. So my bread, so my interpretation of bread is like, it's kind of hollow. I guess, it's like carbs, right? You're not going to get a lot of nutritional value from it. Okay. But it's sturdy. It's like it's the foundation.

So I went with Diablo. Just a rap Diablo. Macho when I drop flows. Bar gets raised up. It's me and Pidi Pablo. Colder than gazpacho. Because to me that's, you know, how did you describe it earlier? Which is a good.

Perfect for functions. Yeah. It's a function song. There's not, I mean, there's like some suicidal lines. But aside from that, it's all pretty much. Yeah. It's kind of all. all in good fun, I guess.

It's like framed as exciting. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. But other than that, it's like, it's just Mac flexing, boasting. It's got the in a sentimental mood sample by Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, which are some of my favorite musicians ever. I'm a suck. I was here to see pretty much all my picks have to do with jazz samples. I'm a sucker for, you put a jazz sample in a hip-hop song, and I'm like drooling.

That sample is amazing. Yeah. It's amazing. And they played it well on the streaming service. I liked what they did. They did have to change it. Right. Yeah.

So for those that don't know, there are some minor alterations most on the streaming version of faces. If you compare it to the original mixtape, I'm pretty sure all the changes made, aside from it being remastered, were done because of sample clearance issues. For people that don't know, sometimes clearing samples is. impossible. Literally like you can't, you have to get approval by every songwriter. I think it's every songwriter that's still living and sometimes if they're not living, it goes to the estate.

They after approve. Sometimes you can't contact them. Sometimes they just flat out say no, no matter how much, you know, writing credits are going to give them. So I'm assuming there's just some samples that could not get cleared. And so they

did the best that they could in those circumstances. I think the album sounds great. obviously you missed some of those interlude samples. Most of them coming from the same source, right? I'm assuming that most of the Bill Murray stuff is taken out, except for the movie clip. But, yeah, Diablo sample couldn't get cleared, so they, I can't remember the guy that came and played it. But they had to, like, resample it or quote, like, you know. Rerecord it.

Rerecord it. The part, yeah. Anyways, so that if anyone's wondering why there's differences, that's it. And to me, it's so, it's not a big deal. You know, I think the way that everything has been handled after Mack's passing has been perfect. It's, I think the family has done the best job anyone can. You know, Mac had had at least remastered his macadelic and what are their best day ever? Best day ever.

We're both remastered, right? Yeah, he did it. he got them on streaming. It's like it was like already in motion. Right. So it's not like Mac himself wasn't open to making modifications to kind of play the game and get it to streaming. So I think all that all said and done, it's great. And the convenience of having it on streaming and now number one,

should probably acknowledge that currently it's number one or even over Young Thug's new project, like is absolutely incredible. It's absolutely incredible. Okay. Let's move on to the special sauce. What do you got for the special sauce? So special sauce, to me, it's like something interesting. It's going to be something that's a little, like, exciting or just like a little, oh, what's that in there?

The ingredient specifically, I don't know if it counts the sauce. I'm counting it a sauce because I'm a free thinker, like Mac on faces. I'm going with icing. There's currently a motif in the iceberg lettuce and now the icing. Okay. It made me happy. This is so dumb. This is so dumb.

So happy birthday is, I think we should, like, it's a song based on a real life story. I think we can go find like countless interview clips of some of his friends like the internet, the band, they talk about how this like really happened, how there was a party thrown at his mansion and Mac was in his pajamas in the studio, not coming to hang out with everybody, right? And it's like, it's a little great Gatsby. like it's a little like oh wow okay mac you're that dedicated to the work and the pool's right there yeah um yeah sorry um but like there's that going to it there's also i think like a little bit of like the paranoia of like who are all these faces at my party i don't know these people they don't and

there's a line like they don't know if i never they don't care if i never go and show my face right like emotivically yeah awesome identity stuff happening there okay There's a birthday party happening upstairs. Where? And it's all for me. Who the fuck cares? They won't notice if I never go and show my face. They just looking for a reason they can celebrate.

He has a reference to the Crucible, which, big fan of the English reference, the literature reference. The literary references also on this album between the samples and the songs, like, Mac, Mac read. Mac got some books. Which is great. and watched a lot of movies. Yeah, and watched a lot. He, like, was questioning so much, right?

And he's like, once he finally talks to somebody, I think in like the second verse or something, he's like, how do you feel? Do you ever sit and wonder what is real? It's like, somebody finally got to talk to Mac at the party. And he's like, do you know what's real? Do you ever reach to touch her and nothing's there? Tell her you love her?

She doesn't care. Like, he's so deep. And he's like pointing out the facade of all these people who just want to party, which is great. And he has, one of the lines he has in here is something that comes up all the time and swimming in circles. He says, getting high, my downfall, kind of ironic.

Like the two things, the high and the low at the same time, the simultaneity, the way there's irony and sincerity and what he's doing, he's got it right there on the face. So I love happy birthday. I love that song. Yeah, that's a great choice. So my special sauce,

my interpretation was like, this is really what sets a burger or a sandwich apart, right? You can have, you know, for the most part, you can't get too crazy with the sandwich, but the sauce is where you can really set yourself apart, right? Because it's like turkey is going to, you know, you can get better quality turkey, but it's going to taste like turkey. Gotcha.

So the special sauce is where you get to really shine. So I chose color and shapes, colors and shapes, simply because it's so unique on this album. There's not another song that sounds like it. But also it's what makes, to me is what differentiates Mac from his peers. Like no one, you know, there's very few quote unquote rappers that can make a song like colors and shapes. Everything from the production, him and Thundercat together obviously is just a great combination. We should say that Thundercat also produce inside outside.

Right, yeah. And so I love, I love the production on colors and shapes. There's just like this sparse kind of spacey instrumentation. There's like a fluidity. The drum beat, if you listen, I don't know how many people like count along. Probably not a lot of people count along, but I do when they listen to music. But usually the snare drum is either on like the two and the four or straight on the three. But in colors and shapes, it never hits on a downbeat.

drum is always on the and which is the upbeat of three okay which what's why there's partly why it's so spacious and not feel it doesn't feel like it's grounded because it's not really um that that kind of like foundational beat we just never really get that's awesome so you're dissecting that a little bit we're trying here we're trying here um but this is a cool theory i came across when doing just a little bit of research about this song Have you heard of the Willy Wonka theory with colors and shapes? I want to hear about this. So there's some evidence.

We know that Mack has seen Willy Wonka. We're assuming he sampled it on desperado from McAdellic. So there's a Willy Wonka sample in a past work of Mac. So we know he's aware of it. So there's a theory. I think I saw it on Reddit that he doesn't sample. I know he doesn't, this guy on Reddit was asking, does he sample Willie Wonka's pure imagination?

and we can play a little bit of it right now. Hold your breath. Make a wish. Count to three. Come with me. And you'll be in a world of pure imagination. Now I'll play colors and shapes. So remember that.

Yeah. I hear it. All right. So I feel like there's a similarity between those two tracks, specifically that high synth or it's a bell on the Willy Wonka, but also lyrically. So Willie Wonka sings, Come with me and you'll be in a world of pure imagination.

That's the first line on pure imagination. And the first line, Max sings on colors and shapes is, if it's colors and shapes, the imaginary, instead of all this weight that we have to carry. So there's like this immersion into another world. The scene in Willy Wonka is when he's, showing the kids the world, the chocolate factory for the first time. And they're stepping into this pretty psychedelic world.

Oh, yes. And maybe you can speak to this, but it comes up a lot in swimming where Mac is referencing a lot of childhood stories because of their psychedelic quality, right? There's this really cool interview clip that we use in one episode, but it's like, it's a young Mac talking too. And he's talking about how interested he is. He's like, all these children's books, all these children's artwork. it's all psychedelic. It's all about transporting you to somewhere else. And so he talks about wanting to capture that idea and wanting to use that because he's like, that's the pure joy. And we see that reflected in his career. Like it's one of the most amazing things is how he like

lived this out and how it comes across in the art of how there is that youthful joy and how to carry that with you, the imagination, the freedom of all of that as you grow old and as you face everything you have to face, you are going to need your pure imagination. You're going to need these abilities to think like this. Yeah, it's beautiful. Right. And like, it's even addressed in the intro of colors and shapes. You know, there's the sample that says, have I answered the question, who am I? I confronted all the time. You have to go out of your mind. Static symbols in the way in which you think. And obviously, I think drugs was a big part of that for Mac, but, you know, we know that wasn't the full story.

We know that Mac, without drugs or with drugs, was very heady and was actively thinking about identity and who we are and how can you achieve real freedom and how do we get past the facade of a face and get to the, you know, the core, the soul. So all that's encapsulated to bring it back to colors and shapes in this song.

It's beautiful, melodic, free. It's what sets Mac apart. I think it shows, like, to me, like with a few changes, this could easily have been on circles. Like it has that quality to me, that singer-songwriter quality, that he would develop more over time,

but this, to me, was an early kind of precursor to that style of work for him and getting comfortable in those spaces. So that's the secret sauce. That's Max, to me, general secret sauce is having that. I think that's what sets them apart from everyone else. So let's move on to cheese. What's your interpretation of?

cheese. All right. So cheese is going to give you some good flavor. I also had to think of my concept of this based on the song I wanted. So I picked grand finale. And I was like, okay, what type of cheese would grand finale be? It's got to be something aged and old. Mac says he's gross gang on this. And he says he smells like old Lo Main. But I was like so mad that LoMain, I don't think has any cheese in it. I was like trying to make it work. It's like, it's aged. It's something aged and old and gross gang as Mac is. But now I pick grand finale as the cheese. I mean, like the second verse of grand finale is incredible.

Hopefully our listeners, people who are fans of Mac hopefully have seen. People who are fans of Mac hopefully I've seen this. There's a video of Mac talking about this song that is one of the best examples I can think of of an artist discussing why they love a song they made. So like go find the video of Mac talking about grand finale. It's on YouTube. It's everywhere.

You can find it. But he's like talking about how much he loves his song and like the effort and the struggle and the journey he had with making it. Like he thought, he was like, he literally says, if I die and this is the last song I ever make on earth, that's his concept of this song. So like leaving on the Big Bang and like making sure you've put everything possible into a piece of work. And that second verse is incredible. Like he opens it up with I Fear Nothing on this Odyssey of Dark Soul.

So like first off like the road imagery, Odyssey reference, everything he's talked about, this entire album. It's incredible. And then the line that I love is God lives in my dog's soul, the devil in his dog bowl. Yeah, okay, I fear nothing on this odyssey of dark roads. God lives in my dog's soul, the devil in his dog bowl. We are the prophets. Jesus was a poor sporty booed and ostracamas. Turn water into wine, but he loved a gin and tonic, cat skeletons in his closet.

Even God would one day be forgotten. And recently I've been feeling. So like if you've watched, if you watched a reality TV show, you saw Mac get that dog, Ralphie. If you saw the colors and shapes music video, that's Ralphie's in the video. And like he talked about this in interviews. People would ask him like, oh, Mac, you have a dog. How's that? And he talked about how great it was and how much he loved having the dog.

There's a, I think I read an XXL. He was talking about like how the dog got him outside of the sanctuary. Like, he's like, I have to go walk the dog. I have to get out. It did make me walk. It did make me move. And so that is really great for him. There's another interview where he's talking, I think, to Rob Markman. And he's like, I believe that the dog shows you a reflection of the owner's soul. Like there's a reflection of my soul and my dog and how important it was. And he was talking about that after Ralphie passed. Right. So it's obviously like a very poignant moment for Mack and something he really believes. So then when you look at the line and you're thinking about Mack seeing himself on his dog, God lives in my dog's soul is him understanding that there's goodness inside of him. And the devil and his dog bowl being the evil in the consumption and the things that we do to fill the void inside of ourselves. And Mack, I think, you know, living that.

There's also, like, again, there's, like, one of the cool, like, symbols you can do with dog is, like, how dog is God backwards and how they are connected and all the, and, like, why humans love dogs so much. and Max's not going to let anybody off the hook either because like he's saying he imbibes and all this stuff he says like Jesus was a poor sport and he turned water into wine like he says it because like Jesus loves drinking which is hilarious so like he turned water into wine

but he loved the gin and tonic but he's like yeah Jesus turned water into wine because he wanted to drink wine he's drinking like the rest of us he's a human being too and then when Max says even God one day will be forgotten. Like, oh my God.

Yes. Yes. Because that's true. Like, that is a true. And like, this comes up when we talk about this season. And when I think about, like, we think about things like Max's legacy, what he's left behind. And you want to say things like, this is eternal. And I think that a lot.

Yeah. But then God's going to be forgotten. We're going to be forgotten. Max going to be forgotten. All of us. are going to be forgotten. And that is true. And that kind of wisdom,

just putting it at the end of this incredibly long album, I mean, is amazing. And he ends, we talk about identity, I think, a lot. He ends the album with the question, Who Am I? He talks about the fireworks after that, but his last, like, wrapped lyric is,

Who Am I? And so Faces is living in the question. is the understanding of no understanding that life is going to be questions without concrete or stable answers we will keep repeating asking these over and over again and this is the way that it goes

and you know like it's just a beautiful cheesy way to do this yeah Mac with the cheesy rabs easy Mac yeah we should yeah that's very beautiful way

yeah beautiful way to state that I love the guitar. I love that he... I'm sure he played guitar before this record on his... Yes, yes. But there's... I love what he did production-wise here. And the way he talks about in that video, you cited,

he seemed so stoked on it. He's so happy about it, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so cheese... I have a tough relationship with cheese because I love it, but I can't have it. Dairy does not sit well with me, so I have to refrain from eating cheese most of the time.

So I can't even remember why I pick this one is cheese, to be honest with you. But I pick friends. Just because I love this song. Miller Mac. Snowflakes keep falling on my expired debit chorus. Don't know why I'm still awake. I got to be up in tendermore. Missiles in my repertoire.

I'd say I'm pretty regular. I never leave my house. I don't know why I got an extra car. My pool house studio is covered up with pencil marks. And every day it's full of jokers like a deck of cards. So where I'm so lonely, there's horns on my dome piece. But I'm not the devil. I'm a motherfucker man it's hard.

Oh my God. The production, again, it's like, I'm a production guy. So, like, if the production, if I love the production, like, I'm just going to gravitate towards that song. This one, it samples Miles Davis. It's like, all right, sold, I'm in. It also, it samples, it's a, it's a, it's a, Sample from the Ghetto Walk, which is from the Sessions of In a Silent Way, which is one of my favorite albums ever. Definitely one of my favorite Miles Davis albums.

If you haven't heard that album, check it out. It's amazing. But it's like a 26-minute song, but they sample the intro. I just love that, it's like a haunting base, but there's also kind of like a bubbly quality to it. Like, that's what I love about faces in general. It's like there's this, obviously there's a darkness to it. When I first was re-listening to the album, that's kind of what I was feeling a lot of was that darkness. But the more and more I listened to it, I realized there's also like this very silly quality to it too, a playful quality.

And the way that he balanced, kind of obviously like psychedelic, like that kind of haunting, the haunting kind of side of a joke or something, you know. Right. How it's real. Right. And so this, I feel like the production on this song, how it moaps. almost in like in a cartoonish way and then he's just fucking spitting and I think

there's just so many bars in this I know why you like this is because the Kendrick Lamar there's so many great because it's called friends and he cites like 100 friends and we forget too this was like on the heels of

the control verse right faces was written kind of in that era where Kendrick just called out pretty much everyone of his peers as like step the bar up. I think he even says in one of the opening lines of, oh, fuck, what song is it? He cites Kendrick. Like, Kendrick says, I'm stepping the bar up and then Max says, I think it's in Diablo. Anyways, um, so there's just a ton of just great lyrics on here. It feels like, like I have written here, like it feels like the album's thesis, because he kind of just, it's kind of like this swirl of, he addresses everything and everyone. All the faces. All the

faces, right. All the faces of his friends, yeah. Yeah. obviously school by Q's presence is amazing and I kind of like the playfulness of it just speaks to like the mood in the sanctuary just whoever's there having fun or whatever just like go on the mic and say Miller Mac you know 50 times make fun of me right right yeah yeah like just the freedom of it yeah so let's move on to last category meat what was your interpretation the protein the protein oh i have a part oh my i'm so happy about this all right so the one i picked is it just doesn't matter the meat you know is obviously the center of this but it just doesn't matter is so special to me because mac sampled one of my favorite movies of all time like as a

child i watched this movie all the time and it's the protein because the movie is meatballs so meatballs is the ingredient okay too shay so hey i did good there you did you did so everybody this is a good sandwich you've just made at home. All right. The meatballs sample is one of the greatest speeches in a movie ever in my mind. I've never seen meatballs, so lay it out for me. Okay, oh, okay, so you want the movie? You want the movie? Yeah, okay, I'm gonna lay it out. The movie is, there's this camp and Bill Murray is like a counselor at the camp, and then there's another camp across the lake. And the Bill Murray camp is like, not as expensive. It's got a bunch of loser kids. It's like cheap. It's like kids like aren't great. Right. And then the other camp across the

lake is like, I mean, it's all fancy, very expensive. These kids are extreme athletes. Right. So the whole summer, hijinks ensue on the camp. You know, the like the Bill Murray camp's kind of losery. Bill Murray's obviously hilarious. And they kind of like, they want to play fun on the rich camp, but the rich camp owns them and makes fun of them. And it's like, hot, look at those losers. Right. And then the end of the summer, there's the summer game. games. And it's like, oh, every year camp, the meatballs camp loses, right? And the rich kids win every year. And so they have a meeting the night before the games. And that's when Bill Murray gives the, it just doesn't matter speech, right? He's like, they have the newest trainers,

they have a health regimen, all this stuff, but it doesn't matter if we win or we lose. And so these kids get so excited. And then the like, the, what's it, when there's a bunch of scenes in a row happening. Montage. That's the word. But like when they do the montage, like these kids are throwing every hijink at the rich kids. They're pulling off every prank they can. They're doing all these funny things to like throw the rich people off and then, you know, eventually like win, right? And it's just, it's amazing. But like conceptually, this movie is incredible and it matters to what Mack is saying. So like when Mack talks about, he's like looking at facades, right? And faces and identity and he's like pointing out how things don't matter or how we're kind of being very

silly and he's pointing out like the folly in a lot of us. Meatballs has a lot more meat to it than people think because like it points out the farce of all the things humans have built up. The rich camp has like built up all these things we're so important human beings were the best for the greatest. But a human being is just a ball of meat. Like it's just a meatball. You're nothing. You're just sack of meat. Right. And so like pointing that out, pointing out how hilarious it is that we think all these things that we construct all these things, but really they fall apart in seconds if we think critically about them, right?

Like the film itself does that, and Macie uses that so well on this song. It just doesn't matter! I tell you, it just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter!

And he has... You know, he has a swimming reference. He says, get faded and sleep in the oceans. keep in motion. Like, when we talk about transients and motion and nebulousness, like, that's all swimming, that's there in the song, which is great. But then he has, he has this line, bugging out, had it all, I'm nothing now, just gave it away. F-a-label, Cain and Able put a name to a face. So, like, the biblical illusion here that he uses to deconstruct how we try to put

a name on a face, how we try to build up an identity and how he's just throwing that away, right? and how it mirrors, it's like a bar for Mac. Like he's got no label anymore. He's on his own. He had all that money. He got that reality TV show. Screw it. No, I'm trying to make art.

It's real. And how like those bars work on like five levels or something. Like it's crazy. So yeah, that's the meat. I love that song so much. Is that your, what's your favorite song? Is that one of your? I think inside outside, just personal.

Yeah. Wise. But probably this one like if I didn't, you know. Yeah. This one is probably it. Yeah, yeah. That's good. I need to re-listen to it because that's a song that I wasn't like high on my list. So I'm excited now with that context to go listen. Yeah, there's at the end there's another sample for meatballs where Bill Murray says he's talking like, there's like a scene where they're like talking spooky stories late at night at the camp. And Bill Murray is talking about some guy who would take an axe and cut somebody's head off. Faces. No identity. He cut your head off. It is a perfect sample. It's crazy. Yeah.

That's amazing. I was fine. Yeah, when I watched the clip of that scene, I didn't have the context, so that really helps. But I did notice there was a, what is it called? The life ring? The circular. Oh, yeah, the life is right. And when he's given the speech, I was like, oh, interesting.

Yeah, hey, look, look, Mac. Look, we know what you did. Yeah. Maybe coincidence, but it was cool. All right, so my meat was, meat's like the star of the show, I guess. So I just picked my favorite song. Um, it's rain. Um,

I spit that prayer hand emoji, the shit that in Jacoby, the holy is the holy Nick Nogh. And some Oakley's has a flex though. Cover up the issues that I kept close. So where I can't deal. I'm in the corner with my headloat running from my shadow. Never ending chase.

He's the pain in a battle that's within me. Snip the same shit that got with me. The high hill depression. My temple fuel the metal coming out to Smith and West and bang. Say a prayer. Leave my brains on. Um, produced by ninth wonder. Anything.

Ninth Wonder produces, I just, I'm a sucker for, he's one of my favorite producers of all time. The sample that he uses, it's called, I think I don't know how to pronounce it, Govinda by this group called the J-O-B orchestra. They're like this kind of like psychedelic 70s band. They were like super into, I think there's like, it's like there's elements of like Indian classical music mixed with like jazz mixed with like that kind of psychedelic scene that was going on in the 70s. They just did one record, but I didn't realize this specific song that is sampled on rain is also sampled in like 30 to 40 hip-hop songs, including Logics, Indicabadu, J. Col's Howe's Howe High and most recently on Isaiah Rashad's RIP Young.

Yeah, so. It's a pretty, or a very common sample. I think Ninth Wonder does the best job with it. And just obviously Vince Staples kills it. Oh, yeah. But there's something about Max verse, his tone of voice, especially on that verse. It's not a very long verse. Every line, though, is just like, I mean, it's really dark, generally speaking.

It starts out with like two bars of like flexes. And then on the third line, he says, that's a flex, though, cover up the issues that I kept close. And then the rest of the verse is just really introspective, specifically about his drug use. And we get one of the, I think, great lines, but a very haunting line where he says, running from my shadow,

never-ending chase, which is just the image of that is perfect in terms of what he's describing. Ease the pain in the battle that's within me, sniff the same shit that got Whitney, the high-heel depression, my temple field of metal coming out the smith. and Weston, bang.

Like, fuck. Yeah, yeah. It's just like, you're like, okay, incredible wordplay, but the content is just like, it's tough. He's addressing it, you know?

And it just continues. But, and even just the last line, the magazines need a quote when I'm gone. Sorry, I don't leave a note. Just, it's just,

it's like this haunting quality of just amazing lyricism and just the subject matter being so honest in confronting those demons. And then I always now think of the high hill depression. We'll talk about the faces cover, but you see the high heels in the cover, which I think is a cool Easter egg,

that if you look at the cover long enough, you'll find a lot of references to songs and specific lines. But yeah, I picked Rain mostly because it's just my favorite song. It's just a great song. So that's the sandwich. So let's recap your sandwich real quick, your sandwich. My Sammy, the bread we had inside outside, which was iceberg lettuce.

The sauce was happy birthday, which was some icing, everybody at home making the sandwich right now. The cheese was grand finale, which was going to be some old, gross, like some blue cheese that stinks. And then the protein was going to be a meatball of it just doesn't matter. Right, right. All right. So my white bread was Diablo. Special sauce. was colors and shapes.

My cheese was friends. The meat was rain. All right, I think that was cool. I don't know. I like my, Sammy. I like my. Yeah, so let's transition into some of the questions that we got. We put out on social media if anyone had a question or wanted to address something about faces.

We got quite a few. I try to pick ones that were coming up multiple times. I think the most common question was or interest was, the cover. So there's two covers, I guess, technically, there's the one everyone knows, which is the yellow abstract image done by his brother. But there's also an alternative cover cover that I think Mac himself drew. Is that true? It looks like Mac wanted it. Like the caption on, it's from the folder that the family uploaded to the Mac Miller website and it says, cover that Mac wanted originally. Okay. Or something. It's like the caption on the picture.

Okay. Sometimes they'll just say Miller and be referring to his brother. A lot of times. I don't know. Yeah. But that one is, if you're not familiar with it, it's a man holding a bear mask over his face and a bear holding a human mask over his face. And they're just looking at each other. And it's a kind of bare-bone sketch. Bear-bone.

You're funny. So I'll toss it to you because I know you've probably thought about this more than I have. I love covers. Yeah. Yeah, so what's your, break it down for us? It's like, it's so perfect in that abstract art sense, in the way that you can stare at it forever and start to put, you can find different faces in the cover, you can have different hallucinations with it. Mack talked about in the book of Mac, there's like a little bit more discussion of this of like, Mac was having hallucinations. He was seeing faces and the things around him, and that was very profound to him.

And you can do that with the cover. The yellow choice is incredible in a literary sense, like I think of the yellow wallpaper, which is the short story dealing with insanity and being surrounded by that sickly yellow as like a sign of impending insanity. Mack is obviously dealing with some of that mental health stuff on the album. I think it's really neat how you can kind of see his face. If you look at that blue part in the corner that looks like the outline of his hair, And I think we pointed this out on social media, but if you look at the cover for circles and you put them together, you do see Max's head and his fingers aligning with that, which is incredible. And I'm going to go ahead and think it's purposeful.

I mean, it's just too much of a match. But again, we get to say these things and think these things because of how abstract that faces cover is. Another thing I think about is how it's torn apart. So Mac has his face on a lot of his album covers. On the surrounding ones around faces he does, right? So watching movies with the sound off to good a.m., he's got his face there. But faces kind of shows it blowing up and exploding with a bunch of these thoughts. And we see that in the mixtape form.

And it's just really cool how it continues those kind of themes. The psychedelic references do seem to continue to continue to. from the watching movies cover where that was like a naked lunch in a reference like William Burroughs in the book called Naked Lunch and he's sitting there eating an apple and in an interview people kept asking

Mack what that cover was about and he's like it's got religious symbols but I want people to figure it out and like think about it for themselves he's obviously like pushing covers that are like that and it's cool also how he goes from like faces being so multiple to good a.m. where he's

showing his yawning face where he's showing a new face and waking up with something. I could probably talk about the cover for it. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, that was my main takeaway was just like the continued exploration of self, which is you touched on, which is like reflected in the art where, yeah, you're going to find something new every time you try.

What you see now, it's not necessarily what you'll see later, and it's not what you saw last week, kind of tying into this idea of identity being fluid and ever changing and not something you really ever pinned down. I think there's definitely Easter eggs. And just to be clear, like, the hand, there's obviously a hand that goes up over his face. If you're looking at the whole image as Mack's face, there's the prominent hand is probably the most visible or most concrete thing is the hand. And Mac has tons of pictures of him in that same exact pose covering his face with his hand. So it seems like, I don't know if it was based off a certain image, but that was definitely a pose that Mac tended to do throughout his.

his career, which covering up the face is interesting, right? Yeah, and there's like the thing of like the world in his hands and giving it back that he talks about on watching movies and that I think is present and subliminally in some bars on faces and him holding his head in his hands and that being the world and things like that, yeah. Right. So if you are looking at the album cover, the original image, if you're familiar with it, is incorporated somewhat in on the right center.

to right, you'll see the bear with the human mask, and he's looking at no one because the human is now floating above the bear. So that seemed to come from the original cover that Mack wanted. There's kind of like a mushroom, a red mushroom in the upper right, and you can kind of see two faces in black beneath it. There's also, like I interpreted, there's like a, uh, I interpreted, there's like a swooping in the direct middle, a little bit up from center. There's kind of like this swooping that looks like legs. And if you look closely, you see high heels, which I think nods to that line in rain that we talked about. There's an obvious, it seems like an obvious cocaine reference in the lower kind of left.

with there's like a, I think it looks like a comb and then like a mirror below it. Something cutting it, yeah. So cutting cocaine, but also looks like a portal, which makes sense.

Again, like these are just kind of observations that I've, as I continued to look at it. I don't know if you had anything specific to call out that you saw in it. I mean, I think those things get it all. Like the,

the, I think we need to clarify. Like the, under the mushroom, like if you look at like the silhouette made in yellow by the black shapes that look like faces or like people their heads um yeah and like the masked creatures that might have been the original cover i mean to me there seems to be a difference or an evolution from having two people wearing masks so the exploration of faces as they directly relate to each other with like the dual

nature of the two people to this one seems to show off the infinite aspects of an individual So I think that that might be part of like the thematic discussion or at least decision to change it from the two fate two creatures looking at each other to this one face exploding into infinite Do you have an interpretation of the It looks like maybe a plant that's dying that was kind of my thought on it It looks like something yeah like wilting I'm not sure like what type of plant it might be but like like a dying plant I think you you have some sense sense of decay and things like that. And if we talk about like the abstract art, I thought about this because it's like

one of the only like big abstract pieces I know is like Guernica by Picasso. Like the death part of this or like the explosion and how something can like rip things open and cause decay, that part seemed like similar to me. But again, I'm like not like an art history major. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's incredible art. Oh, yeah. Really well done.

The colors are amazing. and done by Max Brothers. And I like the new version of it too. The 3D is cool, yeah. Yeah, it works. Okay, I'm briefly interrupting this episode. This is Futuricle recording the day after we record this. Because last night I was looking at the faces cover art again.

And I think I made a pretty big breakthrough that I haven't seen anywhere on the internet, which is really surprising because it's very obvious once you know it. So if you're looking at the faces cover just regular, as we talked about, it's Max face with his hand over his face, we think, with all kinds of Easter eggs in there. But if you flip the image 90 degrees to the left,

so I guess counterclockwise, it becomes a very clear boat. You'll see the blue and the black parts become the foundation of the boat, the white hand becomes the sail. And you'll see very clearly a kind of devilish-looking creature with horns manning the ship, which I'm going to do a video on this on social media, which hopefully will be out by the time you guys hear this. If not, definitely follow at Dysack podcast on TikTok or Instagram,

where I'll break this down a little bit more with visuals. but my initial theory is that this ties into Larry Fisherman, his producer alias, and that makes sense and gives new context to the yellow background, because Larry Fisherman, Max alias, producer alias that started with faces era, wears a yellow, spot-on yellow fisherman suit, including the fisherman hat. But then if you rotate the image another 90, new. so it's totally upside down. It becomes another environment. The hand becomes what I think is Mac Miller. There's clearly a head at the top with a hood on and Max's the fingers become legs, almost like octopus legs. If you look below the white figure, main white figure, who's kind of floating, which kind of ties into the psychedelic vibes of the album. There's what, now looks like a piano player.

The red, right below the white hand, there's a red figure that looks like he's playing the piano. The dying plant becomes like a light hanging off a ceiling and where the circular cocaine cutting becomes kind of a nightlight or a skylight. And also the blue becomes more water like it. It kind of looks like tides of an ocean, but also the sanctuary, Wormack recorded faces, was the pool house studio, like studio made out of the pool house, and the pool was right there. So that might be alluding to that.

So look at it on your own. Let me know what you think on social. And again, I'll break it down. It will probably make more sense when you see the visuals along with it. I'm not sure how much sense I'm making here without the visuals in front of you. But try it, rotate it around. The boat is like. I think it's kind of undeniable that that's that's part of it.

I think the total upside down image is depicting the sanctuary in some way. And yeah, it's incredible. And the whole thing kind of ties back to this idea of faces being perception and max seeing faces and different things. And the cover art seems to suggest that that philosophy that you can look at this image in a number of perspectives. it's going to change and your meaning and your perception and kind of what you think about the image is going to change depending on how you look at it, which seem to be a big thematic idea

that runs throughout faces, like, you know, seeing faces, what's behind a face, all that stuff. So let's get back to the episode. Thanks and thanks for indulging me. And again, follow at Dissect Podcast. And I'm hoping to have a video up by the time that this publishes. But if not, it'll definitely be coming soon. So back to the episode. Okay, so did you have any thoughts on the new track?

Yeah. And why do you think it was picked to be the bonus for faces? The latter part of the question, I mean, I'm assuming the same for you, but we can only guess. I mean, Mac had tons of songs. We're not really sure. I don't think there's been any quotes to why that specific song was chosen. It's produced by DJ Dah He, which is one of my favorite producers, so that's cool. But, yeah, did you have any, I know you're going to pick it for one of your sandwiches.

Yes. So do you have any thoughts on it? I mean, I love the song. Like, one thing that happened in the research process is like, I have gone into the unreleased vaults a bit and seen what I can find there just to see, because circles is kind of like that. And it's like nature. It's like, it's the unreleased stuff that got put out.

But there's a thing with Mac and with all artists of like what stuff they don't release and what stuff we let out and show to the world versus what we don't, what we mean, what we don't, like all these things are in play. the vaults for Mac are incredible and some of it is very haunting. This song, I think to me, has been a haunting one when I first heard the leak. Now hearing this, I think it's like so majestic. It's so like, it's really beautiful. But it's really beautiful in his reckoning with the fact that he's kind of on this journey.

He can't stop it, but he's going to eventually, right? he's asking if he can stop running, if he can go home, if he can stop the journey, but then he's just at the end, like, asking to fade away. Like, he's asking for the ability to make this last longer than a hard stop, which I think might have been a real danger at this time. And if you look at his life and those things, it's just really beautiful and it seems really honest and compelling. And so I'm very happy that it's out now.

It's crazy. Yeah. All right, so we also got asked, what are some of the best anecdotes you're able to find about the sanctuary? I think we addressed a lot of them throughout our sandwich discussion. Made a little list here, but did you want to explain the clockwork flute? Oh, okay, so there was like a DJ Clockwork run on Instagram Live one time and was talking about on inside outside, like, there's a flute in the background kind of playing the melody. And according to clockwork, he was like, yeah, I was on Molly and had not played the flute since I was a child. But then I just picked it up and the song was kind of playing.

And so then I played that thing on top of it. And it was like, oh my God, how are you doing that? And then they just threw them in. And there's a lot of talk in the book of Mac has great stuff about this. But there's like, there was a talk about like how at 8 a.m. in the morning one day after being up all night working, they then went to the music store, bought a bunch of classical instruments and then like brought them back and did it. Like when Mac says, baticello,

now all I do is play it. Like, yeah, he had just done that. Yeah. It's crazy. How just, like,

they were just inventive. We're going to have fun. We're going to play with all the instruments and all the tools. It was amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I watched that video. Yeah,

so he said, uh, Clockwork says he was high on Molly the night before and alone. He'd been playing the flute for like 30 minutes and recorded himself. And I guess Mac was like super interested in that. And it was, fascinated by him recording himself doing that alone. I guess,

I think he was looking in the mirror. while he's doing it too. He's like looking in the mirror, like talking and like, yeah. But then when I went back and I was like, okay, I got to go listen to that flute. I was busting up because it's so out of tune. Like it is horribly, I mean, quotes, horribly out of tune, which is so perfect because it still fits, but like if you listen for it, it's totally out of key. And it's just, and again, it kind of speaks to that playful nature of the process, it seems like. There's a lot of beautiful imperfection in this album. We hear Max sniff. And I mean, obviously,

like there's some stuff that goes with that but like hearing sniff like I don't hear a rapper sniff like I don't hear mistakes I don't hear coughs I don't hear like all this stuff and a lot of polished rap the imperfections really add this like lived in human quality to this. It's like really

amazing to hear this year. Okay there's one Easter egg I wanted to break up in the song Angel Dust kind of dark but also very cool so you can hear him snorting in the beginning obviously referring to Angel Dust which can be snorted but he He samples that snort from the beginning in the second half of the song.

And the brilliant part is he uses it as a rhythmic instrument because he places it on the upbeat. So he's literally snorting up. He's sniffing up. Like you can hear him sniffing up rhythmically with the song Angel Dust, which is like, okay. Yeah. I see. Okay, we get it. I just thought that was like such a brilliant touch.

Another anecdote was. the song Thumbelina, which is probably my least favorite song on here, but then after reading about this, I appreciate it much more because I didn't write the guys named out. I forgot who said it's in the book of Mac though. It was in the morning, and I guess Mac's neighbors had formed a committee to evict him recently for probably obvious reasons. Yes, there's like an episode on the reality TV show where his neighbors are mad at him. And his friends tried to bring like over cookies

And they're still mad So I guess they were talking about that And then they made the song Thumbolina that day And if you listen That's why he goes on this rant in the beginning Like saying fuck you suck my dick Like he's talking to his neighbors But they also sample the Beastie Boy song

Slow Ride It's the repeating sample But if you can't I didn't know what it was saying The sample is They got a committee to get me off the block Living all over this motherfucker try to kick me out That goes for you, Mrs. Watson With your little ass kids

Always fucking crying You got your little chihuahua Fuck you and your motherfucker mama bitch I'm out here And suck my motherfucking dick Remember music And that's the repeating sample Over and over and over

Which I didn't Maybe that's obvious It's hard to pick it out But once you know what it is You're like oh wow Yeah yeah Which I thought was really cool Did you have any other

Any other anecdotes that come to mind? I like every time Thundercat talks about it. Like he talked like talking about like just playing there and being there and the stuff they created. I mean, Thundercat, happy, also happy birthday. Happy birthday. Yeah. Corolla on his birthday right now. Thentuck is one of the most important musicians of the 21st century. And like this is I just love hearing what he, his experiences. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone go get the book of Mac when it comes out next week. I think you can pre-order it now, but it's it's, it's, we'll talk about it a lot with Donna

next week, but it's collection of her essays and then she spoke directly to a lot of Mac's collaborators, people like Thundercat, and their interviews are transcribed throughout, and it's organized by each album. So it's really, really insightful, yeah. How do you think Faces contributes to the evolution of Mac as a rapper, writer, storyteller? I mean, this is like an explosion of creativity, right? Like, he's making so much at this time, too. Yeah, it's insane. I think, yeah, it's like you look at like the timeline of releases, and like he's got different identities he's playing with also, which he's got like the Larry Lovestein, you, EP.

He's got the Delusional Thomas project, and this is him bringing those into Mac Miller, and that's really cool. And he does a little bit of that on watching movies. Delusional Thomas makes a couple appearances there. But to see him bring all these identities on a project called Faces, and to have this explosion is really great, how honest he is, how he's, like, being free with everything. This is, I mean, to me, this is, like, his best rap album. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I guess there was apparently like nine other albums worth of songs.

They're working on so much at this time. Which is like, I was like, it's not even true of they exaggerating, but it came up multiple times. And if you think about it, if he was, was it two years or one year that he was in the sanctuary? Two multiple years, multiple years. Yeah. So two years, if you think about the math of that, it's like, okay, he's in there literally every day working on music. Even if he did one song a week in two years, that's over a hundred songs, you know. So it's like, it does add up. And it makes sense. But yeah, the way I think about is like there's that idea of like 10,000 hours. You do 10,000 hours of any one thing and you become a master. I feel like he's really putting in that work with faces and anything,

everything has to do about this era of just being in that room and just writing and just committing to getting better and being free with whatever style of music and kind of worrying about where it's going to go later. It seemed like there's a, yeah, that freedom to creation. And I really do think it's cool that he was able to synthesize, like you said, those different sounds and those different interests into Mac Miller, starting out with, I can see why he would start out with these side projects that he didn't really want to attach because they're early versions. And he was kind of feeling out what those sounds are going to be, but like faces. But especially when he gets into his, you know, proper albums, Good AM, Divine Feminine and then Swimming, he was really starting to synthesize every. interest, every sound, every facet of what he wanted to be into singular works that were cohesive,

that didn't just explore one sound in a song and then explore another sound in another song. It's like, no, it's going to be all immersive, all one time without much of a differentiation. It's just like, this is the sound, this is Mac. So, yeah, I think that the work, you know, I think it paid dividends in terms of what he was able to do creatively after faces, the faces era, I guess we could call it. Yeah, man. And it seems like, when did Chancellor Rapper's coloring book come out? Was that like 2015, I think?

It's like a year or two after, which was like, to me, like that's like the death of the mixtape. Because, like, Chance was like the mixtape dude. Yeah, yeah. But then it was like, that was just an album that was quote unquote a mixtape. And like, it was going. that way for years, you know, where, you know, I feel like there's this really golden era of late mixtapes with Kendrick, with Mac, with, uh, uh, Jay Cole, like this, this, this new group,

um, following the tradition of Wayne of obviously, but once streaming came, it was like, mixed tapes were redundant, right? Like, to, to download something just wasn't, doesn't make sense anymore. But faces like is a mixtape. Like it feels genuinely like one of those classic mix tapes, which I really appreciate it about the work going back to it. Just because you don't hear this kind of looseness in projects that much anymore, at least the things that I've been listening to, like there is that freedom of just doing whatever you want and not having to worry about sample clearances because for mixtapes, you don't have to clear samples. So literally you can put anything on an album that you want.

I just love that he went all in with that and just made it this sprawling. I usually hate long albums. This, for whatever reason, I don't mind the length on this. It makes sense to me. And there's not really too many lows, at least not to the point where I want to skip songs. And the length reflects the thing. Like it feels bingy. You know, like it feels like the late night.

It feels like the long night. Like, I mean, a lot of the time that I spent listening to this in the last year is like late night writing. And like, it feels perfect in that time. Like the delirious low sleep time. Yeah, the day is like blurring into each other. Yeah, I can see that. All right. So last question we'll address.

Where do you rank faces among other albums and projects? I haven't really done an official thought out ranking. So I'm going to do this on the fly. But what do you got? I mean, so are circles in swimming different? or can we make them one? It's always my question. We can make them one.

Okay. So if they're one, they're one. Like, if swimming in circles are one. Yeah. Then I'd have faces as two. So like it's top three. Let's do top five. Let's do top five.

Or top five. Or do you have top three? Let's do top three. I didn't know what you prepped. Yeah. Top three is fine. I mean like, okay. So yeah, do swimming in circles.

Swimming. Okay. So I'm going to go, I'm going to split them. Circles is one to me. Wow. It's above swimming. Because. And we'll talk about it in the circles episodes.

It is eternal. And there's stuff going on there, I think, that just for me puts it up at one, then swimming, faces, divine feminine, and then probably, like, maybe, I don't want to say an unreleased one. So delusional Thomas is just crazy and fun. I like that one. I'll put that at five for how great that is. Yeah, mine's pretty much the same except swimming in circles is. flipped so swimming's number one circles two faces three divine feminine four and then five would

probably be probably be good a m yeah or watching movies i need to listen to watching movies more though um because it's i love it returning to it after faces which i did this week it has a lot of the same characteristics as faces not quite as free um but i liked i liked it i liked it more returning to it after faces so we'll see what we'll see where it ends up in a more thought-out ranking, but that's how I would probably characterize it right now. Gotcha. Yeah. Cool, man. I think we can end it there, unless you had anything else.

No, it's wonderful to talk about Mac. I'm so happy we got faces that so many more people are exposed to faces, that it is performing so well that everybody can see that. All the love that's out there for Mac is really beautiful. And it's been with this season, it's been beautiful. And I just love everybody talking about all this stuff. Yeah, it's really, yeah, it's kind of a unique experience to kind of, because you get like album anniversaries,

but it's just not the same. And so to get to relive an album release, especially after someone passes like this, and it's like, it's not a new work, but kind of feels new and like, you know. It's also this quality. Like, that's a real part of it is the quality of the work. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Cool, man. Well, thanks for joining. We're going to, we'll talk to Donna next week. We'll have a couple more of these conversations with you towards the end of the swimming in circles, probably. But yeah,

incredible job so far. You too. We're doing good. I think so. I think so. It's been a really, really meaningful season so far. Every season means a lot to me,

but I would say this one is shaping up to be really special. More than I thought it was going to be. So, yeah, thanks everyone for listening, and we'll talk to you soon. All right, welcome. Oh, fuck. there it is

just keep that in all right