Rather, he casually captured the highs and gutting lows of a life observantly, if often drowsily, lived.Ĭount Miller among the first in the lengthening lineage of stars who would first find fame as teenagers on the internet. Terms like stoner poet come to mind to describe him, but his profundity wasn’t like a dorm-room epiphany. In any case, the genre’s firefights didn’t seem to interest him he was too committed to finding his own path, strange and soulful. His words were usually intelligible and studiously crafted, but he thrived less on content than on form and deep feeling. But Miller, who died last Friday of a suspected overdose at age 26, might have brokered peace between the two sides.
Mumbling is a contested thing in rap nowadays, seen alternately as a sign of pretension-busting futurism or dull-minded meaninglessness. “Feel like I do this in my sleep / Literally, I do this in my sleep,” Miller bragged over boom-bap and piano on 2013’s “Avian.” “Yeah, yeah, whoawhoawhoa,” he murmured, as if to an alarm clock, in this year’s “Hurt Feelings.” The cover of 2015’s GO:OD AM showed him mid-yawn, which seemed like his usual state. His words trailed off, blended, and arrived in a parched-throat croak.
