Photo Credit: Warner Bros Records
It’s been close to 9 months since Mac Miller passed and we’ve just been blessed with a new track of his that just leaked online. It isn’t new as in a reincarnation since, but the track Benji the Dog was reportedly recorded in 2015. The song, which samples Valerie Simpson’s 1972 song Benjie, gives an excellent account of his life’s struggle and dare we say foresight into his eventual demise. Drake and Lil Wayne used the same song just a few years before in their track, With You. The song begins with a clip from David Schwimmer saying “He’s never gonna stop being the Juice,” believed to have been added in after the fact because The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story didn’t come out until 2016 where Schwimmer played OJ’s attorney Robert Kardashian.
He talked about the troubles he had with his mother growing up which he settled with her financially now and addresses the overabundance of drugs he uses to overcompensate with his life’s problems… that and sex. “They told me don’t make a promise you can’t keep/All the drugs in your system, you can’t sleep/How many times you had to buy a Plan B/For a girl you never bring back home to meet your family,” Miller raps. “Man, I swear this is what I dream about/Ever since my mom told me that she need me out/Always smoke weed, causing trouble, never clean the house/But I paid her back for everything, I guess we even now.” Later, Miller raps, “So hard to stay sober when you’re feeling f— over so much.”
“I can never sleep at night/F— paying bills, I need a brand new lease on life/Why does doing wrong always feel so right?/Well I guess f— it, that’s life,” he continues later. He finished the song encouraging those going through similar to keep going saying “Say you’re running out of time, that’s life/Said your heart been broke, that’s life/Just pick it up and keep going.”
The ending is quite appropriate given that there’s a Mac Miller Legacy Fund created in his name by the Recording Industry Association of America’s charity foundation MusiCares that helps artists struggling with substance abuse. Announced on the May 16th. A $50,000 grant came from the Mac Miller Fund, created at the Pittsburgh Foundation by his family in September 2018. His producer SAP said he made a full career of music. And for someone who poured out so much to the world, it’s important his legacy gets kept in tact by trying to make sure other artists are able to do the same and for a longer period of time by helping to keep them sober. For him to have passed at 26 was too young and no one should ever have to have that happen, especially if given the proper support.
His friend Schoolboy Q appeared on The Breakfast Club earlier this morning trying to keep from getting emotion about how much he misses Mac. “Yeah, that Mac shit, bruh,” Q said. “To this day, I just don’t understand how I can’t call my n**** no more. Losing a friend to gangbanging is way different to losing a friend that’s, like, an innocent little, like, little kid that’s just super pure,” he added, trying not to get emotional. “I don’t wanna look like I’m exploiting the situation,” he said. “I got an album out and then I’m, like, crying and shit.”
