Mac Miller would have turned 32 today. The late rapper was trending on social media on Jan. 19 as fans reflected on his short but memorable career.
The Pittsburgh musician died from an accidental overdose in 2018 at age 26 after he mixed fentanyl-laced pills with cocaine and alcohol. In 2022, the man who sold Miller the pills was sentenced to more than a decade in prison.
'Your memory lives on eternally through all who love you,' one social media user said.
Many users on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, shared clips from the rapper's iconic 2019 performance on NPR's Tiny Desk. The video has racked up more than 112 million views on YouTube. It features an appearance from the jazz fusion bassist Thundercat, who played on Miller's track "What's The Use?"
Complex shared an interview the rapper did with Larry King in 2017. The journalist asked Miller where he thought he would be in 10 years.
"Hopefully doing a lot of different things in entertainment," the musician replied. "Maybe have a kid."
Miller also spoke about his definition of success.
"There's some people who want to have 10 million singles sold, and that's what they look at success as," the rapper said. "For me, it's being able to touch and affect people in a positive way."
King made a prediction about Miller's future. "You're going to be bigger than you are now," he said. "Much bigger."
There were at least 26,000 tweets mentioning the musician by the afternoon of Jan. 19.
"Happy birthday to my brother," one person said. "Every year that passes it’s almost harder to believe that you’re not here with us anymore but your memory lives on eternally through all who love you! MostDope forever, Mac Miller forever."
"Happy birthday to the goat," someone else said. "You changed the lives of so many people for the better… Mac Miller forever.
The rapper, real name Malcolm James McCormick, put out his first mixtape in 2007 and started gaining traction with his 2010 release K.I.D.S. The following year, his debut studio album Blue Slide Park rocketed to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, becoming the first independently-distributed debut to top the album chart since 1995, and only the second to ever do so.
None of his subsequent albums topped the chart, but they all came close. The final album released in his lifetime, Swimming, saw Miller land on numerous publications' year-end "best of" lists, and earned the rapper his first Grammy nomination.
Miller's singles "Weekend" and "Self Care" have both been certified platinum several times over.
Miller died from an accidental overdose in 2018.
In 2018, the musician spoke to Q about the albums that changed his life. Miller mentioned everything from Outkast's 1998 record Aquemini to Bob Dylan's 1963 album Freewheelin'. He also spoke about Radiohead's 2007 LP In Rainbows.
"It’s a joint that my friends told me to listen to, and it completely changed my whole view of how I wanted things to sound," the rapper said. "The guitar sounds on 'Weird Fishes' and 'Reckoner' are so watery, in a great way. It sounds like a band met up, pressed ‘record’ and just played the whole thing in one take."
