Mac Miller's Blue Slide Park at 15: the No. 1 album Pitchfork gave a 1.0

Fifteen years ago this week, on 8 November 2011, Mac Miller released his debut album Blue Slide Park on Rostrum Records. He was 19 and from Pittsburgh. The album opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 144,487 copies, per Nielsen SoundScan, and no independently distributed debut had topped the chart since Tha Dogg Pound's Dogg Food in 1995. Billboard counted Rostrum as independent even though its records went through INgrooves and Fontana, a Universal arm, a detail the AV Club pointed out at the time.

The 1.0

On 8 December 2011 Pitchfork gave Blue Slide Park a 1.0 out of 10. Jordan Sargent called it "a crushingly bland and intolerable version of Wiz Khalifa", and pointed out that the album has no guests at all, "not a guest verse or chorus." His review even used the sales figure against it: the art, he wrote, was "144,487 times less remarkable" than the first-week numbers suggested.

The numbers did turn. In its second week the album fell to No. 24 with about 25,000 copies, one of the steepest drops from No. 1 of that era.

Mac talked about the review with The FADER in June 2013: "The only time Pitchfork wrote about me before I dropped 'S.D.S.' was when they gave me a 1 on my last album." He added that people later told him the score was "pretty legendary."

A real slide

The title is a place. Blue Slide Park is the playground with a long blue slide in Frick Park, Pittsburgh, near Taylor Allderdice High School. The video for the album's first single, "Frick Park Market", released in August 2011, ends there: Mac on a swing, kids running up the slide behind him.

After he died on 7 September 2018, fans went to the park that same night. CBS Pittsburgh reported that a vigil on 11 September drew a couple of thousand people and that city crews had repainted the slide that morning. In March 2019 Google Maps started showing the spot as "Mac Miller's Blue Slide Playground", though the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy had announced no formal name change.

Seven years later

Pitchfork reviewed Swimming on 3 August 2018 and gave it a 7.5. Evan Rytlewski wrote that its "wistful soul and warm funk fits Miller like his oldest, coziest hoodie." The album debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200.

A month later, on 7 September 2018, Mac Miller died at 26. On 7 December the Recording Academy nominated Swimming for Best Rap Album; the award went to Cardi B's Invasion of Privacy in February 2019. Circles came out after his death, in January 2020, and got a 7.4 from Pitchfork.

The vote

Pitchfork's 1.0 for Blue Slide Park still stands. Riffiter listeners give Swimming 4.2 out of 5 from 375 ratings. Which Mac Miller album would you rate highest? Rate Blue Slide Park and Swimming on Riffiter.