Mac Miller’s premature death, in September 2018, caused an outpouring of grief from fans everywhere, including his hometown of Pittsburgh. Donna Claire Cheesman was one of those fans. “I cried on the floor,” she says.
But Cheessman, who had loved best-selling rap since she first heard it years ago, knew that as a professional hip-hop writer, she had more to offer. The eulogy “Thank you, Mac Miller” was posted on DJ Booth, the website I worked on at the time. But that was also not enough, in the case of a still-rising music star whose life ended at the age of 26, after an accidental drug overdose.
“I realized that the only way I would personally feel better about this tragedy was to write through it,” she says. But even “The Year of the Mac” — a series of weekly online articles I wrote about Miller — wasn’t enough. “Once that was over, I realized I didn’t want to stop.”
The result is “The Book of Mac: Remembering Mac Miller” (Permuted Press), an autobiography that blends Chesman’s writings on Miller’s music with oral history collected from more than 30 of his friends and collaborators, including musicians Wiz Khalifa and Thundercat, and Record company owner Benji Greenberg.
Chesman is visiting Pittsburgh for a live book event on Thursday.
The New Jersey native, who now lives in Philadelphia, calls Miller “my one artist that I feel represents me as a person, all the emotional twists and turns I’ve been through.” Chessman, referring to Miller by his name, Malcolm, says she intends the book to encourage appreciation of the rapper’s artistic growth during his short career — from his 2010 music tape “Kids” to the five studio albums released during his lifetime and 2020 albums “Circles,” a posthumous release Gold is probably Miller’s most famous work.
“It’s an incredible feat to go from ‘Nikes On My Feet’ to ‘Woods,'” says Cheesman, citing two songs Miller produced during that era. “The evolution is mind-boggling, it’s amazing, it’s amazing.”
Miller grew up in Point Breeze, and is best known for honoring his neighborhood with a song and album called “Blue Slide Park.” He turned to hip-hop at the age of fifteen, and by the age of eighteen he was signed with Greenberg’s independent company Rostrum Records, which was still based in Pittsburgh. While Taylor Allderdice High School graduate’s debut album garnered mixed reviews, he quickly developed a psychedelic-based musical style, and began lyrically exploring his demons, including depression and substance abuse. In 2014, Miller signed to Warner Bros.
Cheesman, now managing editor of music streaming platform Audiomack, explored Miller’s life through interviews with those who worked closely with him.
“He was a character, but it was very real,” Thundercat guitarist and composer, a collaborator with Miller, told her. “He was creative, he had a lot of creative energy. He wasn’t afraid of the unknown, most of the time. He invites a guy like me into his life, and he finds a place to live in his reality… We shared a lot of different things, but as a man, he shocked me as a kind of guy” .
Cheesman says the resume is “licensed” in that it has been approved by Miller’s estate. But unlike Miller’s mother who provided the book’s cover photo, the estate was not involved in research and writing, she said. The book includes the turbulent aspects of his personality, she says, until his death.
“It’s like a heartbeat,” she says, “but it’s still a reminder that no matter what kind of darkness was in his subjects, there was this pervasive light he brought to himself and others.”
In Pittsburgh, Miller’s legacy continues, in part through the Mac Miller Trust. Even his music career is committed, following fashion, to re-release his music tape “Faces” for 2014.
The big lesson she learned from researching the book, Cheesman says, was how attracted people were to Miller.
“There was such love and reverence that everyone I spoke to had for it. And it was so touching. Because I knew it made my life better,” she says. “But to know that it has really enriched everyone’s life, it was really cool.”
The Chesman’s Pittsburgh Book Event takes place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, November 11, at the White Whale Bookstore. She will have a conversation with fellow hip-hop journalist Grant Rendner. More information here.
