An Ode to Faces, Mac Miller’s Magnum Opus

Dissecting my connection to Mac’s most honest and personal project.

Source: @Jaydead6 on Instagram

Some music just changes your life. There’s no quantifiable way to measure why, but certain projects instantly click with you and become the soundtrack to months, if not years, of your existence, shaping who you become. For me, Faces is one of those mixtapes. Even years after its release, every listen brings me back to a moment in time in which I turned to the project for a feeling of belonging when I had nowhere to call home, Mac Miller taking the place of a close friend reassuring me that I wasn’t the only one feeling lost and alone.

Source: Brick Stowell

While it’s hard to explain why, of all mixtapes, Faces is one of the handful that struck a chord with me, I think such a meaningful connection to music can only come from a place of genuine understanding. When we hear an artist vocalize our innermost thoughts and feelings, whether they be joy, fear, love, or despair, we form an instant connection with their songs, forging a powerful bond. The rare musicians who can tap into these primal feelings and articulate them in a personal and relatable way connect with us on a deeply emotional level, without the need for Genius to breakdown their lyrics or Anthony Fantano to tell us what to think.

Source: Musicweek.com

While Faces, much like K.I.D.S., Nas’s Illmatic, and other projects that have had profound effects on me are worlds apart from my actual life, they spoke to me through this emotional frequency. I had no way of relating to Nas’s Queensbridge street tales or Mac Miller’s description of the roller coaster that is battling with a hard drug addiction, yet these very artists ignited my passion for rap and music as a whole. To me, Mac Miller has always felt like an extremely close friend who confided in me just as much as I did in him. A symbiotic relationship of sorts that drew its therapeutic power not from the fact that we were struggling with the exact same issues, but because our stories resonated with one another even when worlds apart.

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