Mac Miller felt 'invincible’ before DUI crash in months leading up to his death as friend asks if he was 'trying to die'

LATE rapper Mac Miller told friends he felt "invincible" before a high-speed DUI crash in Los Angeles just months prior to his tragic death, according to a new book.

Mac, real name Malcolm McCormick, was arrested in the early hours of May 17, 2018, after crashing his white 2016 Mercedes G-Wagon into a telephone pole and fleeing the scene on foot.



The rapper, who just days earlier had separated with his popstar girlfriend Ariana Grande after almost two years of dating, hit the pole so hard that he knocked it over and the airbags inside of his car deployed.

Mac and two of his friends climbed out of the wrecked vehicle, hopped a fence, and ran back to his nearby home in the San Fernando Valley where he was later arrested.

The 26-year-old, who for years had suffered from addiction and substance abuse issues, blew more than twice the legal limit and was handcuffed and taken into custody.

Mac posted $15k bail and was released the following morning.

He would later be charged on August 22 with two counts of driving under the influence. However, Mac would tragically die from an accidental overdose before his arraignment and the case was subsequently dropped.

'I JUST FELT INVINCIBLE'

A friend of the rapper has revealed in Paul Cantor's new book, Most Dope: The Extraordinary Life Of Mac Miller, that Miller said he felt "invincible" in the moments leading up to the crash.

In a copy of the book obtained by The Sun, collaborators of Miller's suggest that while the incident was out of character, in hindsight it may have been a warning sign of the sad fate that awaited him.

Clockwork, Mac Miller's longtime DJ, recalled for Cantor a conversation he shared with the Self Care rapper a week after the crash.

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The pair had been standing in the backyard of Mac's home in Brentwood when, looking out at the surrounding mountains, Clockwork asked him: "Bro, what happened? What happened with the accident?"

Pulling on a cigarette, Mac reportedly responded: "I don't know why I did it. I don't know what the f**k I was thinking … Something just told me to floor it.

"Luckily, we hit that tree. And the tree stopped us from going down the hill."

Mac then turned to Clockwork and asked, "Do you ever feel invincible?"

Met by a prolonged silence, Mac is said to have added: "I just felt invincible."

'TRYNA DIE?"

In Cantor's book, Clockwork told the author he was left feeling "creeped out" by Mac's remarks.

"Because, ‘Bro, you had a whole other two lives in the backseat. You coulda killed everybody.’ In my head I’m thinking this. And when he told me [he felt invincible], it just opened up so many things in my mind like, ‘OK, I don’t know what’s going on with bruh," he said.

"That was the craziest response I’ve ever gotten out of anybody. That’s some you-tryna-die type s**t.

"It left a lot of unanswered questions for me. Cause if the wreck wasn’t a big wake-up call, then I don’t know what was. After that wreck, mothaf**kas should have formed like Voltron and went over there. Everybody should have sat down, talked.

"Maybe I should have told people what he told me. That probably woulda made people rally up too, but . . . I don’t know. Maybe I shoulda shared that information. Maybe some people already knew he felt that way. Who knows?”

In private text messages, Mac would assure concerned friends that he was "good", calling the crash a "crazy thing" that resulted from a "rough day."

Publicly, he spun the crash as a positive, insisting it was a long-overdue wake-up call.

"I made a stupid mistake," he told Apple Music's Zane Lowe in an interview on Beats 1.

"I’m a human being. Like, drove home drunk, but it was the best thing that coulda happened. Best thing that coulda happened. I needed that. I needed to run into that light pole and literally, like, have the whole thing stop.”

By "stop", as Cantor notes, Mac meant pull back from public life. Shortly after the crash, he wiped all of his social media accounts and resisted the urge to let his fans know that he was okay.

"People who have been with me through being a 19-year-old wide-eyed kid to being a self-destructive, depressed drug user to making love music to all these different stages, they see something like that and they worry, so your first reaction is, ‘Let me tell them I’m cool,’ ” he told Lowe.

“But you just realize you have time. There will be a time to address those things, but it’s . . . everything’s gonna be fine.”

Still, concern for Miller's wellbeing persisted.

RED FLAG

His ex-girlfriend Ariana, who by now was already ensnared in a hot-and-heavy relationship with SNL funnyman Pete Davidson, issued a public plea on Twitter asking him to "Pls take care of yourself."

The rapper Bun B, a friend and mentor of Mac's, told Cantor that he, like Clockwork, also voiced concern to Mac in a phone call after his accident became headline news.

“I’m all right, Unc,” Mac responded. “It was just a rough day.”

When asked if he needed to talk with someone about what was "going on", Mac replied: "Nah, OG – I promise I'm good."



Bun B said he took Mac for his word, but now believes the crash was among a number of red flags in Mac's life that were overlooked or ignored in the months preceding his death.

“At that point, there’s really not much more that you can do,” Bun told Cantor on reflection.

“I know that there was this concerted effort to help him fight his demons, trying to help him deal with what he was dealing with. And when people are fighting addiction, it’s always easy to put on the public face like, ‘Nah, man, I’m good. I’m working on it, I’m addressing it.’

"You can say everything that you want people to hear you say. You think it will stop them from asking you about it. And then go right back to whatever it is that you told them that you weren’t doing.”

TRAGIC DEATH

A few months later, on September 7, 2018, Mac Miller was found unresponsive by his assistant in a "praying position" on his bed.

Turning blue, and with a foaming fluid leaking from his mouth, Mac's assistant called 911 and attempted to perform CPR, but it was too late.

Mac was officially pronounced dead at 11.51am.

Investigators later found that he had passed away accidentally after consuming a counterfeit Oxycodone pill – a type of opioid – that had been laced with a fatal dose of fentanyl.

Cocaine, ethanol, and alcohol were all also found in his system at the time.

Mac's assistant said his mood in the days before his death had been "positive", and that the star had no known health issues or illnesses.

However, she acknowledged that he did struggle with sobriety, and when he relapsed he'd often consumed drugs, including Xanax and opiates, in "excess."

His last "slip", she said, had come just days earlier on September 4.

In his book, Cantor notes that there was no inclination Mac's death was planned, "although in countless songs, and in numerous interviews, he made it clear he knew the risks of his lifestyle."

The night before his death, Mac had streamed a music-making session live on his Instagram page, eerily telling his audience "I don't know if I'll ever do this again."

At one stage during the stream, he recorded his turntable as "So It Goes", the final song on his new record Swimming, played out.

In an exchange on Twitter, he wrote of the song: "I told Jon Brion to play the ascension into heaven and he nailed it.”

He also traded direct messages with a producer friend, telling him he wanted to collaborate on a number of tracks.

MADNESS AND GENIUS

In his book, Cantor writes that Mac's actions in his final hours of life are not those of a man "who wanted to go."

But when asked by The Sun whether he believed there was a resignation within Mac, and among his friends, that the gifted performer would inevitably succumb to his demons, Cantor responded: "I'm not sure."

"I kind of left that open-ended for the reader to determine for themselves, based upon everything else that's in the book," he continued.

"I tried to not be the judge and jury on it. Because he had so many friends, hundreds of people, who I'm sure could speak to that. I think at different times they were probably concerned in their own way, but I'm really not sure."

He added: "I didn't feel it was my place to answer that question, because those are private struggles that a person deals with, and I didn't want to project my feelings into this or what I felt was right, other than the reality of the situation, which is that he succumbed to it and that was a tragedy."

Cantor, a self-described Mac Miller fan, said he started working on "Most Dope" shortly after the star's death.

The author, a veteran music journalist who has previously written for XXL, Roling Stone, and the New York Times, said it was his "fascination of the line between madness and genius" – a line he believes Mac Miller towed finely – that inspired him to put pen to paper.

"You see that in a lot of people," Cantor said in a phone interview from his New Jersey home. "Whether it's icons who have passed away, like Kurt Cobain or Michael Jackson, or even those who're still alive right now, like Kanye West.

"I just find it fascinating, and one thing I really wanted to do was answer the question of 'what does it do to a person when the thing that gives them their superpower is also their kryptonite?'"

He continued: "Another reason why I really wanted to do it was because I knew that he was a really deep and complex guy. He was brimming with creativity and he had a lot of music out there that was really raw and emotive.

"But unfortunately he became a bit of a tabloid story towards the end of his life. I just wanted to really get underneath all that and really show people who he was in reality."

FAMILY DRAMA

In the build-up to the book's release, which comes the day before what would've been Mac Miller's 30th birthday, Cantor was criticized by the rapper's family who accused him of exploitation.

In a lengthy statement shared by Miller's estate back in October, Mac's family bashed the book, insisting it had been "written by a writer with whom Malcolm did not have a relationship."

They added that Cantor was allegedly “made aware” that Miller’s family and friends were “uncomfortable with him authoring this biography, yet he chose to proceed against our polite insistence that he not do a disservice to Malcolm’s legacy through writing a book without legitimate primary sources."

The Miller further stated that they felt as though the book's "release date of January 18th, the day before Malcolm's birthday, is not accidental."

Cantor, along with his publisher Abrams Books, was accused of using Mac's birthday "as a marketing tool" which the family called "exploitative and incredibly disappointing."

The family concluded its statement by urging fans of Miller to "abstain" from purchasing Cantor's book.

In conversation with The Sun, Cantor voiced disappointment over the family's remarks, adding that close friends of Mac's have supported the project from "day one."

"It's really their support that drove me to continue working on it and doing the best job I could," Cantor continued. "I always hoped that the family – even if they wouldn't participate – would be supportive, and I still hope they will be.

"Everybody wants to work to be liked. I would hope they will one day pick up the book and find something in it that they like about it."

Most Dope: The Extraordinary Life of Mac Miller is available for purchase in the US now. The book will be released in the UK on March 3.


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