Mac Miller’s Long-Awaited Album ‘Balloonerism’ Drops Soon

This past weekend, during Tyler, the Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw festival in Los Angeles, Mac Miller hinted at an unreleased album. His lost project, “Balloonerism,” has now been formally revealed, with a January 17, 2025, release date.

The two-and-a-half-minute teaser, which shown on screens at Flog Gnaw in between sets from Alchemist & Friends and Sampha, has been made available on YouTube. It starts with a sequence of animated shorts before the album cover. Two songs that fans have conjectured were meant for the original album are featured in the trailer: “The Song That Changed Everything,” which purports to feature SZA, and “5 Dollar Pony Rides.”

His official store has also been modified to feature “Balloonerism” in a variety of formats, such as CD, cassette, deluxe vinyl, and clear vinyl.

According to an Instagram statement from Miller’s estate, the album was a top priority for the late rapper and was produced around the time of “Faces.” Although “GO:OD AM” and later albums ultimately took precedence, the estate stated that Malcolm placed a great deal of significance on the project, commissioning artwork for it and holding frequent discussions about when it should be published. “The project, in our opinion, demonstrates his range of musical abilities as well as his artistic bravery. Since bootleg versions of the album have been around for years on the internet and Malcolm has always stated that releasing “Balloonerism” was important to him, we thought it would be best to provide an official version.

Artist Alim Smith painted the image of Miller on the album cover, which he shared on his Instagram page in September 2018. Miller said, “Need this,” in response to an Instagram photo Smith shared a month earlier that was similar in design.

For Miller’s fans, “Balloonerism” has become legendary since his death in 2018. Over time, a rumored tracklist and a number of tracks thought to be from “Balloonerism” have leaked. SZA and Dylan Reynolds reportedly appeared on a few of the songs that surfaced on the Internet in 2020, including “Do You Have a Destination,” “Uber,” and “The Song That Changed Everything.” Miller fans have put together different versions of “Balloonerism” on SoundCloud, which also includes the tracks “Colors and Shapes,” “Stoned,” and “Tambourine Dream.”

In 2018, Miller passed away due to an accidental overdose. The posthumous album “Circles,” which was released by his estate two years later, was meant to be a complement to his 2018 opus “Swimming.”