25 Things You Didn't Know About Mac Miller

This feature is a part of Complex's "Man of Next Year" Week.

If there's anything our digital cover story proved, it's that many people's perceptions of Mac Miller are wrong. It's not just that most people are unaware of his brief addiction to lean—even fewer know the real deal about his upbringing or what his life is like now. Then again most people don't get to hang with Mac, his boy Quentin Q Cuff, and his friend Jimmy Murton to get the scoop on the Most Dope general. Although our Man of Next Year profile captured the real Malcolm James McCormick, there's still a ton of stuff that went unreported.

Here are 25 Things You Didn't Know About Mac Miller.

Mac recently threw a house party at his mansion in L.A. His guests included members of Odd Future, ScHoolboy Q, and the artist formerly known as Hannah Montana.

Mac is a known stoner but he's actually been smoking for a lot longer than people realize. "I'm two years older than him," explained his friend Jimmy Mourton. "We smoked our first cigarette in third grade, we both smoked weed for the first time in fifth grade."

Mac rapped for the first time during a weed-smoking session with his boys. While a beat was playing, he spit a freestyle that was better than anyone expected. Soon enough, he was obsessed.

Mac may not have started rapping until he was 14, but he was always interested in music. "When he was going through puberty, he was going really hard on the guitar," says Jimmy. "He wanted to be a singer/songwriter but people were hating on his voice. He kind of let that dream fade."

According to friends, when Mac attended Taylor Allderdice High School, he would show up at school just to pass out his music and hardly ever attended class. "He'd just hang out in the back of school afterwards, just to be giving people CDs," said Q.

Mac used to cut school so much he would sometimes be out for weeks and months at a time. "They let him graduate even though he shouldn't have," says Jimmy. Q sees it a different way, "He was charming. He had that air of innocence about him so teachers believed him, like, 'Oh, he's not cutting class because he's a dick. He's cutting class because he's pursuing his rap career.'"

Darrelle Revis might play for the New York Jets, but like Mac, he hails from Pennsylvania and attended the University of Pittsburgh. Revis had his ear to the ground and found out about Mac through the Pittsburgh circuit. He brought Mac's music to his agent, Neil Schwartz, who actually helped Mac get a meeting with Jive and Barry Weiss before Mac opted to go the indie route. Mac and Revis even recorded a song together, with Revis going under the moniker, Mr. Manhattan.

Mac plays piano, guitar, drums, and bass. He also wrote and arranged all of the music on his jazz EP, You, which was released under the moniker Larry Lovestein & The Velvet Revival.

According to Mac, this is his most cherished pasttime.

When Mac's grandfather passed away, he inherited some money. With his rap career popping, he was already making a few bucks, so the senior at Taylor Allderdice was able to afford his own apartment. Granted, it was still "a shitty-ass cheap apartment" but nonetheless, it was his. "It was hilarious," says Jimmy. "He would never go to school even though he lived right next to it."

Once Mac started to rap, it became a full-time hobby. "He would come to school looking tired tired as hell," recalls Jimmy. "He'd be like, 'I just been up all night just rapping and writing.' I would walk by a classroom and I'd see him in the classroom furiously writing in his notebook."

Mac has been working with Odd Future quite a bit lately. The first person he got to know in the crew was Taco. "Taco used to lie to them and tell them that he was doing homework and come hang with us," says Mac. Mac later met Earl on Fairfax in L.A. One day Taco brought Earl to Mac's house and they've been pals ever since.

After linking with Earl, Mac started collaborating with him. But they don't always end up making songs together. "Earl loves making beats in my house," says Mac. "He comes through and he'll just make a beat, not for me, sometimes not even for him, just to make a beat."

Mac's sound and style have evolved over time. He's often accused of being a "happy rapper," but that's not the way he'd describe his early style. "I was a grimy-ass rapper," says Mac. "All my shit was 'angry white rapper,' 10th grade angst."

As detailed in our cover story, Mac was a not only a drug dealer at one point, but a "horrible drug dealer." Mostly because he'd rip off his clients by selling shitty weed while promising it was high grade. And even when he had good weed, he would blow his re-up money on studio time.

Rostrum president Benjy Grinberg knew Mac for a while before he signed him. When they first met at I.D. Labs recording studio, Grinberg would give the young rapper advice but that was all. Once Mac started to work on his K.I.D.S. mixtape, Grinberg was so impressed he decided to sign him in 2010.

Mac smokes a lot of cigarettes. His preferred brand is American Spirit menthols.

Mac Miller would never claim to be a thug, but he once spent the night in jail. In February 2011, while on tour in upstate New York, Mac and his friends got bagged with some weed and ended up under arrest. He detailed the hilarious incident in an interview with Complex.

Mac has made a lot of friends while living in L.A. He's been working with everyone from ScHoolboy Q to Flying Lotus to Odd Future. One person he hit if off with is Odd Future affiliate Vince Staples. In fact, Mac's producing Staples' upcoming EP, Tales of A Stolen Youth, under his production alias, Larry Fisherman. Staples previously teamed up with producer Michael Uzowuru to release Winter in Prague.

Despite scoring the No. 1 spot on BIllboard with his debut album, Blue Slide Park, Mac still considers himself an "underground rapper." Considering that he's an independent artist who gets little to no radio play, he's kind of got a point. Even though the term "underground" has become somewhat obsolete in this Internet-driven era of music, having 3 million Facebook fans is no joke.

"I throw a little Pittsburgh reference in there just for funny shit because no one else might get it," says Mac. In one new song he name-drops former Pittsburgh Pirate Tony Womack. Another mentions the Allegheny River.

Mac's fans know him well. One named Laith Hakeem, aware of how much Mac admires Big L, gave him a painting of the late great Harlem MC. The painting reinterprets the cover of L's second album, The Big Picture, but instead of making a gun with his fingers, L is giving the thumbs up.

While making his You EP, Mac decided the perfect inspiration would be documentaries about plants and nature. Birds of the Gods ranks high on his list.

Although Mac is known for being a super successful independent artist, he's also getting ready to to launch his own label called REMember. He's teaming up with Q—who plays Damon Dash to Mac's Jay-Z, "The name stems from a friend of Mac's that passed away, Reuben Mitrani. REM in REMember is capitalized, those were his initials."