Who is Mac Miller? On Blue Slide Park, he was a childish "frat rapper" who made dumb jokes about smoking weed and referred to the vagina as a "cooter." On the claustrophobic Watching Movies With the Sound Off, he was rapping in a pitched-down voice alongside Earl Sweatshirt and Ab-Soul about friends lost, drugs consumed, depression, and the trappings of success. And on the transparent, relaxed GO:OD AM, he sounds like someone’s troubled little brother made good: from the album’s opening horns, you can sense that this is a victory lap for Mac, a homecoming.

From start to finish, this is his most refined and well put-together project. Getting through the 16 tracks on Blue Slide Park was like an endurance test, and even the deeper and much-improved Watching Movies started to sound interchangeable before it ended. The beats on GO:OD AM have a New York, boom-bap feel, with lots of jazz samples and harder drums, and it’s both more varied and more upbeat, from the trap-sounding beats of "When in Rome" or the Chief Keef-featuring "Cut the Check" to love songs like "ROS" or the Miguel collaboration "The Weekend". Miller said he recorded 400 songs for Watching, and sometimes you couldn’t help but wonder about the selection process ("Objects in the Mirror"?) but on GO:OD AM, he’s learned to self-edit.

Lyrically, Mac offers a music industry "Scared Straight". "I’ve seen some motherfucking shit," he warns on "Two Matches". The interlude before "God Speed" includes a voicemail from his brother, checking in on him at a low point in his life, and later on in the song, he admits: "White lines be numbing them dark times/ Them pills that I’m popping, I need to man up/ Admit it’s a problem, I need a wake up/ Before one morning, I don’t wake up." It’s funny to hear a 23-year-old who just kicked his habit and could be considered a kid himself refer regretfully to "all the kids doing drugs" on "In the Bag", but Mac has enough of his sense of humor intact to keep the album from playing like a D.A.R.E. campaign on wax.

On "God Speed", the album’s standout track, he pays tribute to the close friends in his Most Dope Family, especially his right hand man Q, and it’s genuinely touching. "Everybody saying I need rehab/ So I’m speeding with a blindfold on/ It won’t be long before they watching me crash/ And they don’t wanna see that," he raps, thanking the people that got him through the toughest time of his life. He’s never preachy, though: He sounds refreshed and rejuvenated, like someone who has been going for daily walks, eating veggies and drinking fruit smoothies every day.

Many songs here reference his status as a white rapper, signaling his awareness of the rap game’s perception of him: "I’m a white rapper/ They always call me shady," he says on "Brand Name", just a few minutes into the album. "I know niggas think you white and you not about to go in with these bars," chimes in Domo Genesis on "In the Bag". There’s a kind of authenticity to him that has been there since the beginning, if you look for it: He doesn’t rap about breaking the law, because he’s not about that life. He’s a corny white rapper (meant as a compliment) who loves his family, friends, and hometown. We might not learn a lot of specifics about him, but there’s a lot of honesty in his music if you look for it.