Mac Miller Producer Thelonious Martin Hints At Unreleased Album Recorded Prior To Rapper’s Death
Rap fans the world over were devastated in September last year when the news broke that 26-year-old rapper Mac Miller had died of an accidental overdose. The young artist had just released a solo album a month prior to his death, which his followers were raving over.
That album, Swimming, was the fifth and last album Miller released during his lifetime. It earned him a posthumous Grammy nomination, but not the win. Although that will forever remain as such, Miller’s producer, Thelonious Martin, has apparently dropped a major hint that there is an entire unreleased album of Miller’s work in existence, according to Newshub.
Martin explained that he also accidentally learned of the album’s existence, which Miller recorded in collaboration with producer Madlib. The first he heard of it was when he was opening for Madlib at the end of 2018.
“When we was working on Guidelines, he was always excited about all these other songs. He had this Madlib album, called Maclib. I’m opening for Madlib, and about 15, 20 minutes left in my set, Madlib pulls up,” Martin said. “I’m trying to focus and DJ, and Madlib gets on and 15 minutes into his set he just randomly plays a Mac Miller joint. And I turn to him, I’m like, ‘There’s more of these, right?’ He said, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s a whole album. Maclib.’ What! What! He just kept moving on with his DJ set.”
Mac Miller apparently recorded an entire album with Madlib before he died https://t.co/5W5ZrDRCy3 pic.twitter.com/m1qFC7fYth
— NME (@NME) February 22, 2019
As far as Martin knows, there is no actual plan to release the album publicly at the moment, or at least not that he is aware of. However, he would be happy for the deceased rapper’s fans to hear Mac’s last known work should Madlib decide to share it with the world.
“If Madlib decides to bless the world with that project, he should.”
Shortly after Martin spoke up about the existence of the album, Miller’s DJ, Clockwork, seemed to confirm the news over Twitter, with a not-so-cryptic message reading, “And guess who got these records….” along with a link to an article about it.
Another friend of Mac’s, bassist Thundercat, also confirmed the news on social media, explaining that he was actually there at the time the collaboration was worked on and recorded.
Miller’s death rocked the community and devastated his ex-girlfriend Ariana Grande. The pair had been together for over two years by the time they parted ways, but remained good friends. Following his untimely death, Grande took custody of Miller’s dog and got a number of tattoos in his honor.
