“I’m just really glad that I got to have this one last piece come out.”

From Mac Miller’s early days as an upstart teen rapper from Pittsburgh through his maturation into a Grammy-nominated artist, one thing has remained consistent: ID Labs producer Eric “E. Dan” Dan. He has production credits across Mac Miller’s discography, including on the late rapper’s new posthumous album, Circles. Although famed composer Jon Brion handled the majority of the album’s creative decisions, E. Dan still got one last production credit in on “Woods.”

Sitting roughly in the middle of the the 12-track project, “Woods” finds Mac delivering a reflection on a relationship that’s beyond saving over a mellow beat by E. Dan and German duo DAVID x ELI:

Yeah, things like this ain’t built to last

I might just fade like those before me

When will you forget my past?

Got questions, ask, you know the stories

Genius recently caught up with E. Dan to discuss his work on the track, as well as the surreal experience of listening to a posthumous Mac Miller album, and what he hopes will happen with the rapper’s remaining unreleased material.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview by Chris Mench.

I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about the creation of “Woods.” So you said that this was the actual last song that you and Mac worked on together?

E. Dan: Yeah, as far as I can remember. We made it in I think February of 2018. It was right on the end of recording for Swimming, like around that time when we were wrapping up with new ideas. So we were in Conway [Recording Studios] in Los Angeles and we made that from scratch.

And you collaborated with David x Eli on the track, right? Can you tell us a little bit about them and how they were involved?

E. Dan: David x Eli, they’re a pair of producers from Germany. This was actually the first time I was meeting them in person. They came in to L.A. from Germany, and we had met up and were hanging out for the week. And Mac hit me at some point that he was going to the studio, so I just brought them along, and at some point in the night we started just throwing ideas out to work on something, and they had some loops that they had made, like some different ideas, and that’s what ended up being “Woods.”

“Woods,” that was the title of the little sample they had made, which was basically just the keyboard part with the chords. So the four of us and Vic [Wainstein], Mac’s engineer, just put it together right there. [Mac] did all the vocal parts in that session, and then I think maybe a day or two later, he was at Jon [Brion]’s just doing whatever, and he played it for Jon, and Jon added a bridge part and some extra instrumentation.

That was pretty much it as far as what is on the final cut, or final version. There was a couple of little things that Jon added, like apparently Wendy [Melvoin] from [Prince and] the Revolution played guitar on it, which was fucking mind blowing.

He added that stuff after the fact, and I don’t know whether Malcolm was around for when he did that. But that’s pretty much all there was to it. I was honestly really surprised that it ended up on Circles. But I think that was the pile that Mac put it in because he wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted it for Swimming.

When did you find out it was going to be included on the album?

E. Dan: Probably four or five months ago, at this point. I got a call from his management team.

And when you were working on this—I know you said it was at the tail end of Swimming—how much had you talked with Mac about Circles at the time?

E. Dan: Well Mac was always working on a few albums at a time. So Circles was no exception. The reason being is, at least as far as any of us could ever tell, was he would make however many songs for an album, say 100 songs. And his way of sort of feeling better about ditching certain songs was to say, “Well this is going to be for this second album.” So that wasn’t an uncommon thing.

I don’t think that I felt like at the time that Circles was actually going to be a thing, because none of the other albums that he worked on simultaneously, whatever album he was doing, ever became a thing. It just became a folder on the hard drive. So I didn’t feel like this was any different, although the few conversations I had with him, he definitely seemed pretty serious about it. At one point he wanted to put it out before Swimming, but then it just sort of got too hectic and then the idea seemed to be to release Swimming and then do this tour and then get back to it.

I think even Jon said this in an interview recently, probably he would have just done a whole new album on tour and totally forgotten about it. But he did seem pretty serious about putting together a project and stuff that was maybe a little bit outside of what he was known for.

I don’t think that I felt like at the time that ‘Circles’ was actually going to be a thing.

— E. Dan

Now was this around the time when you guys were working on “Self Care” as well, or had that happened earlier?

E. Dan: I did the second half of “Self Care,” after it drops into the new beat. He had the front half of the song already, and then when he was in Pittsburgh, at some point, he played it for me. I was sitting at the computer just sort of messing around with a track. And he had just come in and he was like, “I’m going to go to the bathroom.”

He walked out and was gone for five or 10 minutes. And while he was gone, I sort of did the bones of “Oblivion"—the second half of "Self Care.” He came back and got excited and went right in the booth and did that, and then I didn’t know until the album was pretty much done that he was going to put it together into one song. But yeah, most of that was before we did “Woods.”

Were you otherwise involved in putting Circles together or collaborating with Jon?

E. Dan: No. Decidedly, no. I talked to both of his parents and his brother all the time, and they mentioned at some point pretty early on in the decision to do the album that they were going to have Jon do it. Which, frankly, made total sense to me, after we had done Swimming, and just the direction that the material was in.

[Circles] was basically a playlist on Mac’s laptop that they pulled from to put this together, and I knew what was on that playlist. Had anyone asked, I would have said Jon is probably the best for this. And he was. I think he did a great job. But no, I really didn’t have any involvement outside of “Woods.”

‘[Circles]’ was basically a playlist on Mac’s laptop that they pulled from to put this together, and I knew what was on that playlist.

— E. Dan

What are your thoughts on the album, hearing it now? Is it kind of surreal to hear posthumously?

E. Dan: It’s not weird to hear it so much as it’s just weird to watch the process unfold of an album release and him not be here for it. It’s a little weird hearing the tracks because I was familiar with the demo versions of a lot of them. So just to hear some of the direction that Jon went, it’s just a different experience. Different for me to not be involved with an album, but just to have heard the really rough [demos].

What was different about this album overall, just from a production standpoint, was most of these songs, minus “Woods” and maybe one or two others, they started with Mac in the studio on guitar and keyboard by himself or with an engineer. As opposed to being in the room directly with a producer that had a track prepared or was putting together a track at the same time. So there was a lot of room for these songs to be produced, which wasn’t the case in the past. So this stuff was a lot more raw. So it had to be finished in some way or another.

So for me, obviously, as somebody that’s been involved with Mac’s music from day one, it’s definitely a little strange just to hear these songs being finished and knowing, “Oh man, he wasn’t there for the process.” But I think that said, Jon probably did as good a job as anybody could do to have done it tastefully, beautifully, and thoughtfully.

I was really struck by how it did seem to be very consistent with his vision and his career. I know that some of the artists that have passed recently, the fans have been kind of like, “Well this feels exploitative, or this feels like something they wouldn’t have done.” And Circles didn’t really feel like this at all.

E. Dan: No, it doesn’t. I think it’s impossible to not be left with questions. Like for me again personally, I hear things with drum sounds or something and I’m like, “I don’t know if Mac would have gone with that.”

But I also know that we don’t know. We don’t know where this project would have ended up, and not even Malcolm would have known until it was done. So I think that Jon did the best possible job of putting it together in a way that just didn’t distract from the songs themselves, because that’s the part that was Mac, and the important part. And ultimately [Jon] is pretty much a genius, so he made it sound beautiful. I’m a big fan of his, so I love what he did.

Obviously Mac has so much recorded material. Do you anticipate them wanting to put out more stuff, or do you feel like this is kind of an exception because it was already a vision that he had?

E. Dan: Honestly I have no beat on it whatsoever. His mom isn’t really interested in talking about it, and I’ve never brought it up with her. I don’t know whether they will or not. I hope that they do, because there’s a lot of great stuff, and a lot of great stuff that’s already finished. It just needs to be put together and released. And I hope that they do.

I’ve gone through a lot of motions to get to that point. I hope that eventually they decide they want to go back and sort of comb through the archives. I would be really surprised if they didn’t want some of this material to see the light of day. There’s just so much.

As someone who’s been involved in Mac’s career from the very beginning, looking back, is there one song or album or moment that really stands out to you as something you’re the most proud of?

E. Dan: There’s not one because there’s just so many moments within every project. There’s just reasons that they’re all special in their way. Blue Slide Park, just being this exciting early moment for us all. GO:OD AM, we just did so much work for. Every album’s got something, so I don’t think I could say this one is the one that really feels the most special.

Is there anything else you want to add?

E. Dan: He’s just missed, heavily missed, and always will be, but I’m just really glad that I got to have this one last piece come out that I did with him. And I love what they did with Circles and I’m proud to be a part of it.