A reminder: We recently dropped the first installment of a new series called Offline Recs, a monthly compendium of the movies, music, books, meals, and other cultural ephemera that we can’t stop thinking about — regardless of where they fit in the news cycle.
Especially in the internet age, it’s hard to say who an artist’s story belongs to. Musicians can communicate with audiences directly, fan armies rise up to defend their faves against narratives they don’t agree with, and even if we haven’t met the artist in person, we all have tales of the ways their music has touched our lives. But when veteran music journalist Paul Cantor set out to write a biography of the late, great rapper Mac Miller, an artist whose generosity and infectious kindness were as palpable on record as they were in his day-to-day life, he came up against this question in the starkest way possible.
After the artist’s tragic passing from an accidental drug overdose in 2018, at the age of 26, Paul secured the parti…
