Key Takeaways
- The Divine Feminine, which turns 10, captures Mac Miller transforming love, sex, heartbreak, and newfound sobriety into a lush rap-and-R&B album shaped by his relationships with Nomi Leasure and Ariana Grande.
- Aja Grant’s piano, Dahi’s production, and contributions from Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, Ty Dolla $ign, and Grande helped Miller realize his tightly focused vision across tracks like “Congratulations,” “Dang!,” and “Cinderella.”
- The 10-track album became a blueprint for Swimming and Circles, while “Cinderella” reached No. 25 in 2026 and nearly every song earned gold or platinum certification.
Aja Grant’s adrenaline was already high. Then he got a DM.
It was December 26, 2015 and the pianist and producer was about to sit down and watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens, when his phone started blowing up. Earlier, Mac Miller had tweeted that he was looking for “some beautifully played piano” and Grant’s name had been mentioned enough times that the multi-platinum rapper reached out to him directly.
“He says, ‘I'm making a love project and I need some piano to sing on,’” Grant tells Complex.
Grant sent over some ideas, one of which became the signature syncopated piano line on The Divine Feminine’s intro “Congratulations” From there a creative union was formed. It didn’t matter that Grant wasn’t a regular producer, that his playing had been done almost exclusively in the context of his band, Phony Ppl, or that he and Mac had never even met.
They were on the same musical wavelength, and for Mac Miller, that was the only thing that mattered. Mac was setting out on a daunting creative journey: he wanted a rap and R&B hybrid that sounded like love, sex, and heartache all at once—and he needed the right musicians to help create it.
The Divine Feminine came out nine months later, September 16, 2016, to commercial success and critical acclaim. The album is a rarity in music; a hip-hop record focused on romance, filled with glimpses of domestic bliss, marathon sex, and deep emotional vulnerability. The album is both tight and sprawling, 10 tracks packed with luxurious horn sections, string arrangements, and Grant’s elegant piano, as well as a near-cosmic appreciation for the female form.
Tracks like “Congratulations” and the resurgent hit “Cinderella,” an eight-minute amorous epic featuring Ty Dolla $ign, have racked up more than 500 million streams apiece. Months before its anniversary re-release, scheduled for October 2, the album returned to the Billboard 200.
As Quentin Cuff, Mac’s close friend and hype man, describes it, Divine Feminine captured Mac in a period of major change. He was working hard to address personal demons, living in a new city, and most evidently, navigating both great heartbreak and newfound love.
“He was taking strides to become a better man,” he said. “He was transitioning from one relationship into another. He went to rehab. He took a lot of pride in his sobriety and he took a lot of pride in his relationship with his lady.”
The journey to Divine Feminine
Divine Feminine includes some of the biggest names on any Miller project. There are features from Kendrick Lamar, Ariana Grande, and Anderson .Paak, plus production from Grammy winners like Dahi and Frank Dukes, but it’s a singularly Mac Miller project. From goofy bars sold on pure charisma (“I just eat pussy, other people need food”) to the stacks of elegant vocal harmonies led by his signature rasp on “Stay” and “Skin,” Divine Feminine captures what’s great about Mac, especially his artistic ambition.
“He had the concept from day one and it didn't really change that much. It was like the concept was like a God and he was worshipping the concept,” Grant said. “It didn't change, it was more like, ‘How can I make more songs to fulfill this dream, to fulfill this concept?’”
By 2016, the narrative around Miller had already been re-written several times. He went from being a plucky independent upstart to an unfairly labeled frat rap headliner to a multi-level musician as comfortable singing and producing as he was rapping verses. Traces of the Divine Feminine Mac Miller can be heard on his sophomore album Watching Movies With the Sound Off’s “Someone Like You” and “Youforia,” romantic songs with earworm melodies and an edge. But Cuff highlights early tracks like “Fly in Her Nikes” and “Got a Clue” as evidence his romantic side was there from the beginning.
“He always was a ladies man. He always loved to make songs for women,” Cuff said.“I think this was really just the amalgamation of that.”
Cuff likens Divine Feminine to Marvin Gaye’s Here My Dear, both diaristic albums dealing with the highs and lows of love. Cuff says the LP’s creation coincided with the final chapter of his relationship with long-time girlfriend Nomi Leasure, as well as the beginning of his relationship with Ariana Grande, which lasted for two years.
“Mac was very much in touch with his emotions, and he was going from one relationship to another in the two greatest loves of his life,” Cuff said. “I feel like that's why that album is really special to me. He's literally giving you the heartbreak of losing one of his greatest loves and then the joy of finding his next one.”
Nearly all of Mac’s projects include love songs, and he covered romantic ideas more thoroughly through his jazzy alter ego Larry Lovestein and The Velvet Revival. But he used The Divine Feminine to explore little intricacies of romance. The lead single “Dang!” is a Hail Mary to save a relationship, with Miller’s cheeky verses balanced by .Paak’s somber chorus, originally written not for lost love, but fallen friends. “Stay” sees Mac trying to extend the euphoria of those long, early relationship nights for just a few more minutes, while “God is Fair, Sex is Nasty” plays on the sacred and profane dichotomy. Even Grant’s piano part on “Congratulations” was meant to “[tell] a story of two people.”
Most of the writing was finished before Grande entered the picture, but her presence is felt on the album in ways both subtle (supporting vocals on “Congratulations” and “Stay”) and overt (their duet “My Favorite Part,” the internet-breaking revelation that she was the subject of “Cinderella”). Dahi highlights the importance of her presence at their sessions.
“Ariana was around a lot during that time, [which] was super beneficial,” he said. “She has great taste and he has great taste and [there was an] energy. Even having a woman in the studio, it's a great barometer of like, ‘OK, we got something. This feels like we’re on the right path.’”
Mac Miller’s transformation
Like so many of Miller’s projects, his friends and fellow musicians characterize the Divine Feminine era by focusing on Mac’s growth. He found new ways to tap into the musical community he’d been honing since he first moved to Los Angeles from his hometown Pittsburgh in 2012 and channeled his boundless enthusiasm into what Cuff calls “his tightest, most cohesive album.”
“He was just so creative. It was kind of just like a person who just pulls out a paper on a train and just starts drawing,” Grant said. “He would do that with music.”
After historic success as a part of the indie label Rostrum Records, Miller made the decision to sign with Warner Records in 2014. He released GO:OD AM in 2015, a masterful rap record, but his constant state of creativity meant he was often fleshing out multiple project concepts at once such that sonic and thematic throughlines were easy to trace.
“I remember having conversations and he was like, ‘How do I change? How do I evolve?’” Dahi, the star producer for the slow-burn hit “Cinderella,” said.
Cuff sums it up even more succinctly: “It was a transformation.”
Divine Feminine saw Mac growing as an orchestrator, finding ways to use his own talents and the musical community around him to evoke specific ideas. He did that through personal vulnerability–shortly after their Twitter exchange Mac invited Grant into his new home in Brooklyn. Their bond and mutual support through breakups helped inspire the piano on “Cinderella,” which Mac wanted “to sound like him playing a janky piano in the corner of a bar.” (In a Vulture Q&A about the album, Miller stressed Grant’s importance to the record.)
The success of “Cinderella”
This chapter came with unique circumstances, most notably the absence of his core Pittsburgh crew. There wasn’t any animosity, just a separation…like in the way you might briefly drift from your hometown friends while at college. Divine Feminine features only one beat from ID Labs, the duo of Big Jerm and E. Dan who had been producing and recording with Mac since K.I.D.S. Cuff, historically a fixture and consigliere in the studio with Miller, recalls the complex emotions he felt when he first heard the record.
“I went to the listening party and Mac was sitting cross-legged listening to his album, very serene. I just remember being like, ‘Damn, the album's just done and he loves it, and this is what it is,’” he said. “[It felt like] my bandmate made a solo album.”
Miller only released one more LP before his death in September 2018, but the skills he honed while making Divine Feminine can be heard all over Swimming and its posthumous follow-up, Circles. His increased confidence as a singer led to beloved tracks like “2009” and his interest in rich arrangements spurred a creative relationship with famed composer Jon Brion.
Further proof of Divine Feminine’s enduring legacy can be found as easily as a quick scan of the Hot 100. In the spring of 2026, “Cinderella” exploded on social media and began creeping up the charts, steadily climbing all the way to No. 25. It was the rare genuine, unorchestrated viral moment in, one that came from fans old and new using the song to soundtrack their posts about love and nostalgia.
“I feel like because of numbers and algorithms, people feel like it just needs to look important. I feel like people aren't actually feeling the records and letting shit with them,” Dahi said. “To see this happen for Mac, who was always making music regardless of if it was going to be popular or not [is special].”
Despite the album debuting at No.. 2, none of its singles charted on the Hot 100. But over the next decade, fans kept falling in love with The Divine Feminine, and nearly every song on The Divine Feminine has now been certified gold or platinum. His unique vulnerability continues to help fans understand their own experiences with love and heartbreak, and his artistic openness has even helped some find their own musical voices.
“He [told me], ‘One of the things I love the most about being a musician is people covering the songs I worked on." I think it gave him so much life that people did that,” Grant said. “So if he was here today and if he saw what people were doing for [Divine Feminine songs like] ‘Congratulations’, I think he'd lose his mind in the greatest way possible.”
