Mac now paints the events that followed as a blur. “Dude, I was 18 years old and I got thrown onto the road for two-and-a-half years straight,” he says. “There was no chance of normalcy.” There were more mixtapes, and more quietly massive hits—“Best Day Ever,” “Donald Trump,” “Frick Park Market.” If you weren’t paying attention, the chart-topping debut of Blue Slide Park might have come as a surprise, but its success was all but written in stone. It was Mac’s coronation as an artist, and also a generational statement about the potential of pop music (or at least this particularly narrow strain of pop music) to thrive outside of the existing industry machine. Still, it was bittersweet in that it established him as the most visible of the so-called frat rappers, the head of a movement that he represented easily but that didn’t exactly represent him. “That was never me,” he says. “I never went to college, I was never in a frat, I was always uncomfortable at college parties. I didn’t even go to parties!” He claims to have stumbled onto the persona, but it’s a believable one. Likability and cordiality remain a big part of Mac’s appeal; he’s deeply concerned with making people in the room feel comfortable, and being the carefree party dude is the easiest way for a teenager to project those desires.

During one of our many conversations, when the subject of race comes up, it becomes apparent Mac has never fully processed his skin color’s role in his rise. “People look at me like I really capitalized off [my whiteness],” he says. When I ask him if he thinks he did, he turns sheepish: “Not intentionally.” He continues, loosely skirting the question. “I think white kids saw me and were like, Holy shit! That could be me. I think I was an easily relatable person. I probably still am. But [on Watching Movies], you hear a lot of fucking insecurity about who I am.” While Mac’s social and creative circles are about as post-racial as anything is in this day and age (and have been for the duration of his career and maybe his whole life) his actual audience is white teenagers. This itself is not a punishable offense, but as he attempts to up his cool factor, he may need to distance himself from the first wave of fans that initially bolstered his career.

By old guard hip-hop standards, Mac’s rapping was considerably far below decent in the K.I.D.S. and Blue Slide era. His voice was thin, his flow strained. But in the modern hip-hop landscape, his core audience was too clueless or indifferent to chide him for his ineptitude. Now, as he surrounds himself with a group of much more traditionally talented (black) rappers, he’s clearly working overtime to keep up. The end result is awkwardly charmed, the sound of his wide-eyed desire to find himself and find acceptance. Where other rappers might downplay their pop-rap past or blame it on outside influences as they mature, Mac has no qualms or regrets about that stage in his career. In fact, he’s particularly zen about it. “It’s on me. I portrayed this,” he says, while sarcastically mimicking the underhand snaps from his “Knock Knock” video. “So what? There’s something I can appreciate about [that]. I was 18 and able to craft hit records at an independent level.”