Over the weekend, Tyler, the Creator held the 10th annual Camp Flog Gnaw music festival and used the two minutes before The Alchemist & Friends’ set to pay tribute to Mac Miller and tease the late rapper’s long-lost record, Balloonerism. Per Uproxx, before The Alchemist took the stage, screens around the stage played a video featuring the tracks “The Song That Changed Everything” and “5 Dollar Pony Rides” off Miller’s unreleased Balloonerism album.
Balloonerism 🎈 pic.twitter.com/AOmEXOPUlR
— The Mac Miller Memoir (@MacMillerMemoir) November 17, 2024
Balloonerism has been floating around since before 2014’s Faces mixtape, but the album’s myth grew following Miller’s 2018 death. In 2020, the song “Do You Have A Destination” appeared on the now-defunct music forum LeakThis. The Faulty Jules YouTube channel explains that the LeakThis user who posted the song said it was supposed to come out before Faces. Metadata revealed it to be the third track off an unreleased album called Balloonerism. Over the next few days, the user continued releasing songs from the album, including “The Song That Changed Everything” featuring SZA and an original version of Miller’s “Uber.” The rest of the album would soon make its way to the internet but was never given an official release. Speculation surrounding the album continues to create waves throughout Miller’s fandom, as this Reddit rundown details the album’s history.
When Tyler, the Creator and his cohorts will release Balloonerism is still unknown. Perhaps it’s cold comfort to the Miller fans that simply acknowledging its existence is the first step to pulling it out of the vault.
Balloonerism isn’t the only Mac Miller release supposedly in the works. Last year, producer Madlib announced that he was finishing work on an unreleased EP. Miller’s final album, the posthumously released Spaces, came out in 2020.