Today in Hip-Hop — August 3: Mac Miller’s ‘Swimming’ Turns 8, Kris Kross’s ‘Da Bomb’ Hits 33, and Key Glock Turns 29

August 3, 2018. Mac Miller drops Swimming, his fifth studio album, on REMember Music through Warner. Thirty-five days later — September 7, 2018 — he’s gone at 26. Which means every time we come back to Swimming, we’re listening to the last body of work he ever heard released. He co-produced most of it himself. He brought in Jon Brion — Fiona Apple’s guy, the score writer behind Punch-Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine — to build a chamber-rap sound that no other artist in his lane was even reaching for.

You have to hear Swimming in context to feel the eight-year weight of it. This is post-Divine Feminine Mac. Post-Ariana. Post-DUI. Post-recovery attempt after recovery attempt. The album opens with “Come Back to Earth” — one man alone at a piano, mumbling, “I got neighbors, they’re more like strangers, we could be friends” — and moves through “Hurt Feelings,” “Self Care,” “Wings,” “Ladders,” and “2009,” where a full string section lifts him into a promise he made to himself: I don’t need to lie no more, nowadays all I do is shine, take a breath and ease my mind. That’s the through-line. It isn’t a rap album about triumph. It’s a rap album about learning to breathe again.

Critically it landed. Debuted #3 on the Billboard 200 behind Travis Scott’s Astroworld and Drake’s Scorpion — arguably the most crowded month in modern rap. Grammy-nominated for Best Rap Album at the 61st Grammys, losing to Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy. Two years later, in January 2020, his estate released Circles — the companion piece Mac and Jon Brion had been building alongside Swimming the whole time. Swimming / Circles together is the concept: you swim in circles until you learn to swim out. He didn’t get to finish it, but he mapped it. Eight years on, that map still holds up.

Also today in hip-hop:

• Kris Kross — Da Bomb turns 33 (1993). The sophomore joint dropped on Ruffhouse/Columbia with production handled front-to-back by a 20-year-old Jermaine Dupri. Guest verses from Da Brat and Super Cat. The duo were trying to shed the child-star sheen of Totally Krossed Out and go hard — darker, tougher, less “Jump.” Double platinum. Chris “Mac Daddy” Kelly passed in 2013; the backwards clothes stay forever.
• YG — Stay Dangerous turns 8 (2018). Same day as Swimming, different coast, different mood. YG’s third solo album — A$AP Rocky, 2 Chainz, Quavo, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Big Sean, and Nicki Minaj all through it. Debuted #5 on the Billboard 200. Sonically the last big Bompton statement before the tone of West Coast street rap started shifting again.
• Key Glock turns 29 (born 1997, Memphis). Young Dolph’s little cousin — signed to Paper Route Empire, went Gold with Yellow Tape in 2020, and became the label’s face after Dolph was killed in November 2021. Very few artists inherit a legacy and don’t fumble it. Glock hasn’t fumbled.

Yesterday we covered Rob Base & Salt-N-Pepa’s 38-year run. The week’s been rich. Tomorrow we ride again.

Stay creative — The Custom Creative Team