In the fall, during the heyday of TDE, ScHoolboy Q’s Oxymoron and Isiah Rashad’s Cilvia Demo , and Chance’s Acid Rap owned the cassette tape-to aux speakers. In 2014, it was Acid Rap, Flatbush Zombies BetterOffDead, and Childish Gambino’s Kauai. Kanye kicked off the summer in rap when he locked himself in a Paris Penthouse for 2 weeks to write the entirety of his new album, which also doubled as his new alter-ego, Yeezus. They lived in a different spot on your phone and consciousness - mixtapes only got ranked against each other. You’d have to listen on SoundCloud or DatPiff.

Mixtape music a decade ago was a different world. In three parts, Mac shows the cost of realized dreams, searches his reality for meaning, ultimately accepts the strange sweetness of wisdom at the expense of innocence. The album speaks to anyone who has looked in the mirror and found the bitter sweetness of lost innocence. In the 20 song journey, he held a mirror up to himself and let his fanbase into his struggles with his own reflection, which revealed drug addictions, isolation, and numbing riches. Mac Miller’s Faces, recently released on Spotify 7 years after it was released as a mixtape, was his boldest exploration of the self.

The mirror is the battleground where the whole of life is laid bare, where only the stream-like thoughts of the mind can provide an explanation. Look at yourself in a mirror all your life and you’ll see Death at work, like bees in a hive of glass.” The 1950 French film Orpheus portrayed the mirror as the place to watch death’s course perhaps a less macabre interpretation is of the mirror as a lifelong place struggle with self. “Mirrors are the doors through which Death comes and goes.

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