Mac Miller’s presence is still felt nearly five years after his September 7, 2018 death at just 26 years old from an accidental overdose of alcohol, cocaine, oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl (as found in an autopsy relayed by Variety in November 2018). His estate has kept his discography — and, by proxy, his spirit — alive with vinyl releases, such as Faces in 2021 and Macadelic (10th Anniversary Edition) in 2022.
Today (August 3) marks five years since Miller dropped Swimming, his final album before his passing that posthumously became his first-ever platinum-certified record in early 2021.
Accordingly, the Swimming 5-Year Collection is available on Miller’s official website. The expansive collection includes Miller’s August 2018 NPR “Tiny Desk Concert” pressed to vinyl for the first time, a Swimming 5-year anniversary vinyl, customized Vans Authentics, several graphic tees, hoodies, hats, shorts, and other miscellaneous items.
“We are continually inspired by all the love for Malcolm’s Swimming from fans old and new,” Miller’s Estate posted from its @92tilinfinity Instagram account. “We are thankful to be able to have worked with @nprmusic to press his Tiny Desk performance on vinyl for the first time so that more people can discover Malcolm’s little corner of the Internet that we love so much.”
Producer Jon Brion told The New York Times that Miller had intended for Swimming and Circles, posthumously released in January 2020, to be two-thirds of an album trilogy.
“He had this whole aquatic theme that came out of something we’d talked about when he was working on Swimming. I’d noticed he mentioned water a few times in the lyrics, and then that grew into all these discussions about water and what it sounds like that became kind of a running joke,” Brion told the publication in an interview published January 20, 2020.
“There were supposed to be three albums: the first, Swimming, was sort of the hybridization of going between hip-hop and song form. The second, which he’d already decided would be called Circles, would be song-based. And I believe the third one would have been just a pure hip-hop record. I think he wanted to tell people, ‘I still love this, I still do this.’”
See the Swimming 5-Year Anniversary Collection below.
Mac Miller is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.