Mac Miller’s Last Days and Life After Death

One week before his death, Mac Miller was happy. On August 31st, the rapper invited the bassist Thundercat — a close friend and collaborator — and his daughter, Sanaa, over to his Studio City, California, home to spend the entire day celebrating the girl’s 12th birthday. “He refused not to celebrate it with us,” Thundercat recalls with a laugh. “He was like, ‘What do I get her?’ ‘I dunno, some Gucci flip-flops?’ ” Miller treated his guests to dinner, sang “Happy Birthday” twice, and then retired to the couch, where the three friends spent the rest of the night watching Sanaa’s favorite TV shows — with Miller periodically stealing her phone and trolling her Instagram and Snapchat feed. “The happiness was there, man,” Thundercat says. “I could see it in him. And it wasn’t fake.”