With Mac Miller, you truly never know what you're going to get. The Pittsburgh rapper's career has been a roller coaster thus far, with total artistic shifts that seem to happen every few albums. When Mac really made a switch in sound in 2013 on Watching Movies with the Sound Off, it seemed like he found something he was comfortable with. He only cleaned it up on GOOD AM, a pretty solid and fun album with some good replay value. Mac is a guy who is always experimenting and doing new things with his musical range, so let's see if he evolves further on The Divine Feminine.
After some thorough listens with this album, I feel a lot of different opinions going through my head about it. With a situation like this, it can be difficult to properly review the project. On The Divine Feminine, Mac Miller took a pretty sharp turn from his last project, which was a high-energy collection of uptempo tracks. This new album is only 10 songs, all centered around women, love, sex, and in general a lot of the lessons he's learned from women throughout his life. It's pretty interesting to see Mac go ahead and create an album with a core structure and concept like this. He's dabbled in love songs in the past, but here he's making it a centerpiece of the artistry. How he went about making the music, though, is where my opinions change. While I am impressed by the album concept and flow, I'm disappointed in how a lot of these songs sound. Mac had an excellent thought process towards this album, but in my opinion the execution was off.
The Divine Feminine has a very pretty, relaxing, and atmospheric sound throughout it that I'm pretty into. Mac got some good producers together for this album, and I think it sounds professional and gets the romantic concept across. My main gripe with this album, which oddly is something I liked a lot on GOOD AM, is Mac's vocal performance. I honestly didn't like how he approached a lot of these songs vocally at all. His singing has never really resonated with me and on this he seems to do it more than ever, which single-handedly turned me off of some songs. There were also times where I felt his vocals made songs with otherwise good features not nearly as good. There's the track Cinderella, where I think Ty Dolla Sign put in a good hook, and the overall melody of the song is very nice. But, Mac's rapping didn't do anything for me and it felt boring to listen to. A couple of songs here were a bit unbearable because of how Mac sounded. Soulmate, Congratulations, and Skin were all, in my opinion, some of Mac's weaker tracks that he's done. Some combination of bad singing, boring flow, or corny lyricism made these tracks lowlights for me. Another gripe I've got here is the song lengths. While I think this project flows pretty well, some of the songs go on for way too long and I think a lot of people will just get bored eventually. Songs such as Stay, Cinderella, and We were pretty decent, but going on for over five minutes didn't work in their favor.
There were a small handful of songs on this album that really saved it, and reminded me that Mac Miller simply has tons of talent. This guy can put together incredible songs, and I was at least happy he flashed that a little bit on The Divine Feminine. Dang! with Anderson .Paak, is absolutely phenomenal, and the best track on the project by a long shot. I know I had complained about song length, but this song has the catchiness, melody, and emotion to justify that length. Everything about this song is awesome, and I wish Mac went with grooves like this more often on the album. Planet God Damn was pretty solid as well, as it had a laid back vibe I liked, combined with a very well-done hook. It seemed like Mac didn't try nearly as hard on this track, effortlessly delivering his lyrics over the beat in classic Mac Miller fashion. The only other song here I was substantially impressed by was God is Fair, Sexy Nasty, where I feel Mac and Kendrick Lamar put together a fun, melodic collaboration that combined the direction that both artists seem to be going in these days. Kendrick sounded great singing all over this and Mac's rapping was solid. Lastly, this song wasn't Mac's best singing performance but I need to shout out My Favorite Part for Ariana Grande's performance. She totally saved this track from complete boredom, sounding so strong and confident. Her singing impressed me so much, and I liked when her and Mac started singing together near the end too. I really enjoyed these tracks and they flashed a lot of potential that Mac has when he does romantic songs. The thing is that this potential didn't show nearly enough here. The album isn't bad, but I don't think its very polished. Some lazy singing, odd song lengths, and boring tracks really led to this album being sort of mediocre.
Wrap Up
+Cool, unique, and interesting concept for Mac Miller to go with
+Album flowed together well and some single tracks were true standouts
-Mac's singing sounded subpar for the most part
-Some songs were far too long to enjoy
-Not much replay value with how boring some of the songs become
Best Tracks: Dang!, Planet God Damn, God is Fair Sexy Nasty
Worst Track: Soulmate
5.9/10
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