This week marked the tenth anniversary of Mac Miller’s GO:OD AM, and in honour of such, his estate has published a special anniversary edition, making it now his third posthumous album. GO:OD AM was a hip-hop album first released in 2015 as Mac’s major label debut. In quick success, the polished yet deeply personal project reached no.4 on the Billboard 200. The album chronicles his battles with addiction, recovery, and the pressures of fame with honesty and humour.
The new anniversary edition provides fans with three previously unheard of tracks – ‘Royal Flush’ (featuring Vinny Radio), ‘Cable Box’, and ‘Carpe Diem’. Each feels like a natural extension of GO:OD AM’s sounds, opening up with confident trap beats laced with the introspection that can be seen to define Mac’s later work. Upon its initial release, critics of GO:OD AM argued that it was too long at 70 minutes. Now, fans are grateful for every additional minute provided.
This edition is now the third posthumous release from Mac’s estate. Circles (2020) was completed by producer Jon Brion after Mac’s passing in 2018, and offered a tender, lo-fi continuation of his creative work. The next to follow was Balloonerism, released earlier this year, a much awaited long-lost project that was originally recorded a decade ago. It was met with immediate success, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200. Fans have consumed his posthumous work with a bittersweet significance, enjoying the continuation of his legacy and work with heaviness that is especially felt when listening to his lyrical postulations on life and death. The second track on GOOD:AM , ‘Brand Name’ features the haunting line “To everyone who sell me drugs: Don’t mix it with that bullshit, I’m hopin’ not to join the 27 Club”. This lyric now sits with painful prescience, adding a haunting layer of meaning to the re-release.
Mac Miller’s estate is often widely praised for the care and respect they dedicate to his posthumous catalogue. The responsibility lies with his family, with the help of collaborators and producers he kept close in order to preserve a coherent artistic vision that continues his sound faithfully. However, this praise wields the question of whether posthumous albums ever truly called for.
There long exists a debate over the morality of posthumous releases. Music is a deeply personal production, and its release usually remains the choice of the artist alone. Taking that decision out of their hands can risk crossing a line of privacy and exploitation, with doubt of their approval to any of the creative choices made. The world of hip-hop and rap often encounters this concern; marked by the loss of many young artists who never had the chance to decide how their work should live on in a world without them.
At their worst, posthumous projects can come across as evident ‘cash grabs’ by labels or associated collaborators. Sony Music faced severe backlash after raising the cost of Whitney Houston’s greatest hits in the wake of her death. Jimi Hendrix’s surviving tapes were overdubbed, reworked, and mixed so heavily that the results strayed far from his sound and authenticity. This initiated a 20-year legal battle between Hendrix’s family and his label. Both these cases bring light to how easily artists’ legacies can be warped, when profit intention overrides honour and legacy conservation.
However, when handled with the right level of integrity, posthumous releases can offer something meaningful in a final goodbye– not just to fans, but to all close to the artist. Leonard Cohen’s Thanks for the Dance, Dance was greatly praised as a seamless continuation of his music, carefully cared for and released by his son, who expressed the importance of it as part of his healing process.
This dilemma is pertinent, and increasingly so for many artists, who in turn seek to take control of their legacy. Tyler The Creator and Anderson. Paak have stated that their wills ensure no posthumous work will be released, with the former describing it as ‘gross’ and the latter emphasising that such work is never intended to be heard by the public. Alternatively, Ed Sheeran has already planned an album called Eject, written into his will to be released after his death.
Mac Miller seems to be a special example of the care and respect that can go into posthumous work, even in the absence of desired instructions for future releases. Each new project has felt like a continuation of the story he wanted to share through his life – one marked by honesty and resilience. GO:OD AM’s anniversary edition demonstrates that when posthumous work is handled well, it can invigorate a balanced amount of nostalgia, expression, and closure – proving important for both fans and the artist’s legacy.
“Mac Miller (19) – splash! Festival 20 (2017) (cropped)” by Nicolas Völcker is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.