Posthumous albums are never great, but “Balloonerism” by Mac Miller, released on Jan. 17 might be the exception. 

Addiction and overdose are seen as regular occurrences in the larger scene of music. However, Mac Miller’s overdose that inevitably led to his death on Sept. 18, 2018, took the music community as a whole by surprise despite addiction and drug use being a central theme in Miller’s 2018 album “Swimming.” 

Posthumous albums in the music scene have very low expectations when released because the record label is in creative control, not the artist themselves. When a posthumous album is released, the label of that artist takes old songs that the artist did not choose to release in a past album. These songs could be very old or not representative of what the artist would actually do. The albums are usually received by audiences as a cash grab, or as a record label’s last attempt to squeeze every bit of value from an artist they had signed by releasing unfinished music. In contrast to this trend, Miller’s first posthumous album, “Circles,” released in 2020 shattered the very low expectations that fans had of becoming a classic part of Miller’s discography.  

Similarly, “Balloonerism” defies expectations from its first beat. The album starts with a seemingly improvised beat involving a tambourine; it then quickly transitions  into a powerful intro, “DJ Cords Organ (feat. SZA),” which then carries out an ethereal vocal display from SZA and signature production of heavy drums and slow melody from ThunderCat. The album then transitions into putting Miller at the center of the story with “Do You Have A Destination?” and “Friendly Hallucinations,” bringing back the iconic 2010s Mac Miller sound that made him popular to begin with. 

The second half of the album takes a look into Miller as a person, revealing what feels like his take on the human experience. Miller directly probes questions about death and its effect on the people around the deceased, best highlighted by the song “Manikins” where Miller connects his own personal experiences with the certainty of death.

 The album as a whole feels as though Warner Records, Miller’s label, put genuine thought into why they needed to release another posthumous album. Miller was already planning to release a mixtape titled “Faces” in May of 2014; the records that are featured on “Balloonerism” were all recorded in the same timeframe that “Faces” was recorded. This means that the music featured on “Balloonerism” was actually meant to be released. Unlike many other posthumous albums in which the highlights of the album come from the artists that are featured in it rather than the original artist themselves, “Balloonerism” makes Miller the center focus. 

“Balloonerism” is what fans deserve from a posthumous album; it’s an album that doesn’t insert the wishes of a music conglomerate in the form of ill placed features form other artists. Rather, it gives a different voice that Miller intended to present to the world.