Mac Miller soaks up newfound critical respect as he readies Canadian tour

TORONTO – Before he was even old enough to legally sip an alcoholic beverage in his native U.S., rapper Mac Miller had topped the American album chart and tossed off four gold or platinum singles. When he finally did turn 21, he released a second Top 3 album, one which awarded the once-dismissed MC with a rapidly rehabilitated critical reputation.

So sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of just how young Miller is. Even the rapper himself does it.

“I always forget that I’m 21. I always be feeling that I’m 45 years old,” the cheerful Pittsburgh native said in a telephone interview this week.

“It’s funny. I’ll be sitting around thinking I’m running out of time — like man, I’m going to be an old rapper soon. (Damn) I’m getting old. Then I’m like, oh, this person didn’t put out an album till they were 28? Nevermind. We’re good.

“Every time I hang out with (L.A. rapper Schoolboy) Q, I realize how much time I have because Q is old as (hell),” Miller continued, in fact using a more colourful word. “He just turned 28 and I keep on telling him that he’s going to have to retire soon. He’ll have like one album maybe and maybe another one — if he can get it done quickly.”

As guileless and gregarious as Miller comes across during a breezy telephone chat, this was in fact a year in which he started to prove his maturity.

His independently released 2011 debut “Blue Slide Park” topped the U.S. charts and went gold in Canada but turned off many critics who wrote the youngster off as an opportunistic frat-rapper. A particularly scathing one-out-of-10 review in influential website Pitchfork sized Miller up as a “more intolerable version of Wiz Khalifa without the chops, desire or pocketbook for enjoyable beats.”

Given such scornful notices, it’s fair to say that his sophomore effort — this summer’s “Watching Movies With the Sound Off” — arrived as something of a minor revelation. Over appealingly blurry soundscapes — many of which were produced by Miller himself, an emerging talent on the boards — he churns out narcotic musings and melancholic confessions while trading jabs with some of rap’s emerging lyrical heavyweights: Earl Sweatshirt, Jay Electronica, Schoolboy Q and Action Bronson.

On Wednesday, he begins a Canadian tour in Vancouver that will also hit Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, Halifax and St. John’s, N.L. And, with his newfound critical success, he embarks on the trek in a positive mindset.

“It was great to just like really have a firm belief in what I was doing and stand by it and fight for it and just kind of trust my own creative thought process, and then have it work out in both reception, quality wise, and also commercial success wise,” he says. “It’s not necessarily about the numbers but it was great to me that an album like that could sell, and especially on an independent label.”

Still, he wasn’t necessarily in a good headspace when he was actually making the record.

He’s been open about trying to overcome an addiction to “lean” — the slang term for a type of purple codeine, promethazine and soda cocktail — and the disintegration of his long-term relationship to his high-school sweetheart.

When he showed an early version of his record to rapper/producer Tyler, the Creator, he was told it was too dark. And Miller says as he emerged from that gloomy period, he did in fact try to brighten the corners a bit.

“As dark as some people may think that that (album) was for me, it was a lot darker and just like, sadder (before),” he says. “The record was made over a long period of time. If I would have made that record in like three months and captured a certain moment, the whole thing would have been pretty melancholy. But because by the end of the album process I was kind of in a more positive place mentally, I wanted to have a little bit more spices on the album.

“It kind of helps put more perspective on it.”

Even beyond his own record, Miller had a busy summer. He dropped a playful verse on Ariana Grande’s monster hit “The Way” and found himself drawn into the excitement surrounding Kendrick Lamar’s expertly delivered — and oft-misunderstood — “Control” verse, in which the L.A. rapper implored many of his peers, including Miller, to rediscover hip hop’s competitive spirit.

Miller jokes about it now, discussing the competitive spirit that he insists does exist between him and close friends Earl Sweatshirt and Schoolboy Q.

“(It’s) not in a malicious way. Other than Kendrick,” he laughs. “Now that Kendrick talked that (crap), he can get the real bars.”

Also amid the busy summer, Forbes included Miller at the tail end of its list of the world’s highest-paid hip-hop artists, reporting that he had pulled in $6 million in the past year — a distinction that unnerved the young star.

“I was really uncomfortable with that,” he says, soon lacing his response with profanity. “It’s just kind of a weird thing to me that people care so much about who has the most money. … It’s like, ‘oh man, like dude, look at how much Diddy made.’ Of course Diddy made a bunch of money! That’s Puff Daddy, dude! Of course he made over $100 million!

“I don’t want my random cousins to know how much money I have,” he continues. “I don’t even want my dad to know how much money I have. It’s not that you don’t want to be generous. I just don’t like that being part of who you are.”

Suddenly, he switches gears.

“I do notice being one of the youngest people on that list. And that’s tight.”

Next up for Miller? He’s looking forward to being able to get off tour and make more music, with a particular eye on trying to land more production work. He also wants to resume work on his full-length Pharrell Williams collaboration “Pink Slime,” though he notes that he wants to revisit much of what they’ve already recorded.

And Miller — who already sports more ink than the Sunday New York Times — also has his eye on a couple new tattoos, including a yellow submarine on his right leg and, lest anyone doubt his music-geek bona fides, a stomach design featuring the cover of beloved indie eccentric Daniel Johnston’s 1983 tape “Hi, How Are You.”

He does seem to have things together right now, but says that’s a moving target.

“At first you think you have control over it and then you lose control over it,” he says. “And then you think you’ve found a way to control it and you realize that wasn’t it, and you try something else. It’s a big process.

“I feel like I have a great hold on whatever and I won’t — and don’t — regret anything, but maybe in 10 years I’ll look back and be like: Man, I’m an idiot. I should have got a cabin out in Montana and been riding horses. Who knows. I think it’s all about keeping an open mind.”