(Gray News) – When Mac Miller died in the fall of 2018, the 26-year-old rapper was working on a companion album to his Grammy-nominated effort “Swimming.”
On Jan. 17, that album, “Circles,” will be released more than a year after Miller’s death, according to a statement from his family.
“This is a complicated process that has no right answer. No clear path,” the family said. “We simply know that it was important to Malcolm for the world to hear it.”
Miller died in September 2018 at his Los Angeles home of an accidental overdose of cocaine, alcohol and the powerful opioid fentanyl.
He was known for his throwback style of rap, influenced by the sounds of Lauryn Hill, OutKast and the Beastie Boys.
His 2011 debut album, “Blue Side Park,” topped the charts.
Miller is among the musicians whose deaths have been linked in recent years to a national wave of opioid abuse.
Prince died in 2016 when he took counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl that looked like a generic version of the painkiller Vicodin.
Matthew Roberts, guitarist for the band 3 Doors Down, also died of an overdose in 2016 and had fentanyl and hydrocodone in his system.
Tom Petty died in 2017 of an accidental overdose of fentanyl, oxycodone and generic Xanax, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.
Copyright 2020 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved.