Biography
Larry Lovestein & the Velvet Revival served as an alter ego for rapper Mac Miller, making its first appearance in 2012 via the EP You, whose sound leaned into jazzy, lounge-oriented textures. Mac Miller reached the Billboard 200 in 2011 through the independently released debut studio album Blue Slide Park, which presented listeners with his party-centric hip-hop approach—a direction he continued to emphasize the next year on the mixtape Macadelic. That commercial breakthrough, however, masked deeper musical curiosity and genre-shifting impulses that would later bring the artist wider recognition. After setting aside Pink Slime, his planned project with Pharrell Williams, Miller began working in the studio alongside producer Jon Brion. Opting to sing rather than rap, he shaped melodic, jazz-tinged material at the electric piano. When You arrived in 2012, it captured a hazy, retro nightclub atmosphere. The project stood as an early step that signaled a pivotal shift in Miller’s direction, one he and Brion expanded upon with the Grammy-nominated Swimming in 2018 and Circles in 2020, the latter issued after Miller’s death at age 26.
Albums
