Producer Jon Brion on the gutting task of completing Mac Millers final album after his sudden death.
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Working with producers likePharrell, he picked up tips on how to work more efficiently in the studio.
Around rappers likeSchoolboy QandEarl Sweatshirt, his lyricism improved.
And the jazz musicianThundercat made him excited to be more experimental.
When I met Mac Miller, he was somebody who was interested in meeting me.
In truth, he had this sort of sheepish thing with me.
These were his exact words: Oh, yeah.
That seems absurd, but it was a worry in his head.
I said, Hey, man.
Dont worry about that.
Its all human expression.
Hes like, No.
I said, They got it down to two words: organized sound.
The more you think about it, the more beautiful it becomes.
Thats all it is.
So, that was our first paragraph of speaking to each other.
I was like, Oh, thats cool.
And honestly, it didnt go a lot further than that.
And I think he may have met you.
I was immediately taken with it.
It was a combination of stuff that ended up onSwimmingand stuff that would becomeCircles.
In his first four or five visits to me, he played four or five different songs every time.
It doesnt need anything.
Most of the time when I said that, he would light up and go, I agree.
I just didnt know how to do it.
But he didnt yet have the specific knowledge about how to make it sound the way he wanted.
I just think the chord should change halfway through.
Within an hour of his first visit, we were into that process.
There was something different about him.
There was something different about the work every time he visited.
I think maybe when he had played that stuff for other people, they werent sure what to do.
Hed picked the stuff he picked forSwimming, and then we had this other pile.
Knowing him, by then he already would have recorded an album on tour.
Its worthless to say how awful it was for anyone else.
They asked me to see it through.
I said I would.
Its quite honestly them as much as Mac that I kept in my mind while I was working.
That took a few months.
It was probably February or March of last year.
I worked painfully slowly.
I thought I should check out everything in case there was something great that should be included.
In the process, I picked four things he hadnt bothered to play me in visits.
The cover of Arthur Lees Everybodys Gotta Livewas one.
Blue World was another.
I was incredibly impressed.
The lyrics are so good, and I thought it was musically so good.
I just heard them and was moved by them.
I Can See is the perfect example.
It made me so sad he was gone.
In retrospect, I could see why he was covering Everybody.
If he got interested in something, hed really fucking learn about it.
It wasnt surface knowledge.
His curiosity was of the deeper nature.
I heard Everybody and thought it should be included.
There are a couple of songs onCircleswhere I really went to town after the fact.
He was into that.
There were certain things I knew I had to do on Hands.
We worked for a while to match the tone.
If there was stuff I had to replace, wed painstakingly work to make it invisible when it happened.
All the high-end, studio-y sounding overdub stuff was from very early on.
Good News wasanother song that was much more of a collaboration than most of them.
Thats kind of a fun, exciting process if youre playing when somebody suddenly gets outwardly affirmative.
I looked up and went, Thats great.
Hes like, Ah, Im not sure.
Maybe that could be a whole different song.
I kid you not, he said to me, Really?
I remember Mac asking, Do these two things go together?
I said, Yes.
My point is your subconscious knows they do.
Were not grafting two things together randomly because you dont have a finished song and theres some weird deadline.
Its not like some of the 70s records where they just did that.
Im like, This is great.
To then have the lyrics of that particular chorus come in is not merely appropriate.
Its actually great, and I was affected by it instantaneously.
I told him, You should know these drummers.
You should experience it because I think all of them will influence the way you do other things.
I can attest to that, because everybody I just mentioned to you has had an influence on me.
Mac wondered about everything.
He wasnt afraid to think out loud about it.
He certainly saw all of it as a body of work.
The term I found myself using when deciding what to add toCircleswas complete thoughts.
They werent thoughts I had to complete for him.
This was a guy who spoke very well for himself.
I shouldnt even be here talking about it.
In terms of anyone elses perception, I cant do fuck all about that.
The only thing I care about is people getting to hear it.
The people who are affected by it have the benefit of being affected by his insight and his articulation.
Everything else doesnt matter.
