2009

“2009” is the 12th song from American singer and rapper Mac Miller’s fifth studio album “Swimming”, and is the last album to be recorded in Miller’s lifetime.

“2009” sees Miller take a reflective journey from the year Miller’s breakout mixtape “K.I.D.S” was released, up until the present day, as well as speaking about wisdom he has earned throughout his life.

The producer of the track Eric G, spoke about the song’s process and message to DJ Booth:

“We have a couple other songs that never came out, but ‘2009’ was the first one that I actually got to be there to record with him. It was in Seattle when he was on tour [Editor’s Note: Mac was on ‘The Divine Feminine’ tour, around November 2016]. We had dinner at the Space Needle one night, with him and Ariana and all the people on tour. Went to the studio for two nights in a row. The way he did the song, he did it so quickly. He works really fast and does a lot of stuff at all times.

That’s what’s really crazy about working with him, too, is that he will sit down and play piano. Then he’ll play guitar, then he’ll play bass. He’ll play drums. Everything! The studio we were at, they had a big audio room, and he just played drums in there all crazy and came back in the room and played piano. It’s just insane. I think a lot of people think he’s just a rapper, which is fine, but he’s multi-talented. It’s just fluid. He just kind of exists, going with it. Instead of overthinking anything, he just goes. That speaks a lot to people’s talent, too. Not even a second thought. He just always did. Right off his first thought and instinct.

I did the whole beat [on ‘2009’]. It was a sample chop that I had. I did all the drums, the bass, the piano. The chords. I did the whole thing. It was just a beat on my computer that I had. So [we were] in Seattle, at the studio I was talking about. He was sober for a while at this point. He was looking all healthy and stuff. It was just me and him there, and I was kinda going through my own thing at the time and I was asking him for advice. We just talked about that for hours, going in and outside, smoking cigarettes.

He was like, ‘Play me some beats.’ And the first or second beat I played was that one. He just paced around the room for a little bit, with the beat playing. Then he put it in Pro Tools, and then he paced around for a little bit and did the first whole half of the song in a pitch black booth with no phone or anything. I don’t even know how he did it, and for it to be so meaningful. It’s crazy that it just came off the top of his head like that. He does the whole first half, and he goes, ‘Oh, that was tight.’ Then he did the rest a little later, but he didn’t write anything down, or anything. It was really crazy to watch.”

There was never an official music video for “2009”, however the audio video on Miller’s YouTube channel has over 23.5 million views and over 197 thousand likes as of late September 2021 (since its upload on the 3rd August 2018).

Read the lyrics to “2009” here.