14 | YOU (don't know until you try)

In prepping for this week’s album club, I learned more about Mac Miller’s artistic evolution. Although I was previously familiar with Miller, my knowledge was limited to his mixtape efforts. While reading up on his backstory, however, I came across his 2012 Jazz-influenced EP, YOU, which was released under the pseudonym Larry Lovestein. That took me a more recent discussion of how the EP previewed his later musical evolution.

Around the same time that he was being classified by many as simply a “backpack rapper,” Mac was already taking large steps outside his creative comfort zone. It was during fall of 2012, shortly after the release of his mixtape Macadelic, that he released his experimental, jazz-infused EP, titled You, under the alias Larry Lovestein & The Velvet Revival. Little did we know at the time that this release would be a glimpse into his forthcoming musical prowess.

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It got me thinking about the value of creativity for its own sake and whether we make enough time for that within sport. Even worse, I wonder if our typical instinct is to push athletes in the opposite direction. In the age of analytics, this instinct may be heightened; we may push conformity with data that doesn’t tell the full story. For example, we can point to someone’s shooting percentage and say, “You clearly need to only be shooting X type of shot.” That is similar to pointing to Miller’s mixtapes and demanding that he stick to that approach because those have been successful. It makes me wonder what would happen if, rather than tell athletes “this is or isn’t who you are,” we encouraged them to actively explore options outside of their current role(s). What would they discover? Miller made that sort of exploration in 2012 but it didn’t come to fruition until several years later. It may be tempting to dismiss any efforts that don’t align with an athlete’s perceived skillset, but it is also possible that we simply aren’t giving those efforts enough time to mature.

In this view, trying becomes a path to knowing rather than simply a precursor to some expected outcome. In other words, you know by trying. You gain knowledge in the creative effort. It may not pay off in the moment but no creative act is wasted. It lives forever at some level within you and changes you moving forward.

Miller’s evolution also makes me think about the impact that trying can have on confidence. His explorations in 2012 came under an alias. Given the comments from his co-producer on a later effort, an alias might have been the cover he needed to take such an artistic risk:

The production on these Larry Lovestein tracks can be compared to that of Circles as well. Things really start to click when you hear the electric piano sounds that are very reminiscent of the melodies that Circles co-producer Jon Brion brought out of Mac during the album’s creation. In an interview with Zane Lowe, Brion talks about how he would leave the room so that Mac wouldn’t feel self-conscious about playing. The melodies that he would come up on his own in those moments, according to Brion, were the most magical and genuine.

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I get a sense of similar reservations from Miller in a viral clip of an exchange with Rick Rubin. Rubin seems to be encouraging Miller to shift from asking “Is this good?” to asking “Is this me?” Miller is doing it, but you can tell that it doesn’t come without some hesitation. I wonder, however, whether we would have seen Miller willing to go to this place artistically if not for the 2012 exploration. In the YOU EP, Miller was free to try something very different from what he had produced to that point. And it was nothing that his previous public efforts foretold. He built confidence as Larry Lovestein. He brought that to play - albeit with reservations - years later as Mac Miller. Perhaps if he had lived, we would have eventually gotten a Malcolm McCormick album.

Negareh Salehabadi, Amirhossein Pakravan, Reza Rasti, Mehdi Pourasghar, Seyyed Jaber Mousavi, and Mohammad Ebrahimi Saravi. 2024. Can binaural beat music be useful as a method to reduce dental patients’ anxiety? International Dental Journal, 74, 553-558.

summary: Researchers wanted to know whether binaural beats would affect anxiety during and after dental appointments. Binaural beats are produced when tones of different frequencies are sent to each ear, resulting in the illusion of a third oscillating tone. Research has connected these beats to lowered anxiety, improved focus and attention, decreased stress, increased relaxation and mood, and pain relief. In this study, participant (n = 80) anxiety was measured twice, with half of the participants (n = 40) being presented with binaural beats in the 10-minute interval between measurements. Both overt (i.e., in the moment) and covert (i.e., daily/general) anxiety were assessed at each measurement. As illustrated in the table below, the intervention group reported lower overt and covert anxiety post-intervention.

potential translations to sport: Although the mechanisms beneath binaural beats are not well-understood (Ingendoh, 2023), this is just one of many studies showing the potential for anxiety reduction. In this study, the beats were presented alone. In other research, however, binaural beats have been coupled with video or compared with music alone (Bhusari et al., 2023; Rathi et al., 2024). For these reasons, binaural beats seem like they have potential as an additive in athlete efforts to manage pre-game anxiety or enhance post-competition recovery efforts. Athletes could certainly choose to use them in isolation, but they could also be added to video highlights or pre-game music choices to enhance the effects of music and video. Binaural beats can be easily produced in free programs like Audacity, which is an added bonus. I have personally experimented with adding them to an athlete’s preferred recovery music for a runner who had to manage multiple heats over a 4-day period. It proved to be an easy add-on to his existing routine. It should be noted that, for binaural beats to work, athletes need to be wearing headphones.

Earlier this month, ESPN profiled former NBA All-Star Baron Davis, his alter-ego Bart Oatmeal, and their shared role in his recent efforts to take his musical pursuits more seriously. The full article is worth a read, but one quote jumped out at me:

Expressing yourself means being comfortable about who you are and what you like. A lot of times in basketball, you have to be what they like.

from HOW BARON DAVIS FOUND HIS VOICE AS RAPPER BART OATMEAL

As creative as Davis was on the court, it seems that he felt that creativity to be limited by others to at least some extent. In the ESPN piece, Davis explains how his musical efforts have both freed him to be his creative self and challenged him to express himself with a vulnerability that may not have been required (or encouraged) within professional sport. It is a good reminder to question how we balance conformity and creativity in our efforts to help others reach their potential!

If you have a half-hour to spare, check out Oatmeal’s album STEEL CUT and see what you think. I am currently giving it a listen as I write this issue, and may or may not have spent 2+ hours of my day with track 5 on repeat!

Mac Miller (as Larry Lovestein) slides a line in this track that feels like it speaks to more than just the specifics of the song’s narrative arc:

It gets a little crowded
All things runnin' through my mind

larry lovestein & the velvet revival SUSPICIONS

Providing opportunities to create or experiment or even just reflect may be way of helping performers empty the mind. Ideas can be brought to life. Fears can be recognized and potentially even confronted with action. Mental clutter is released into the wild, where it has far more space to run free!

For this issue, the simple answer seems like the right one. Rather than build out a playlist, I am linking the Mac Miller-as-Larry Lovestein effort below. It comes in at under 23 minutes, so you have no excuse not to give the whole thing a listen. You can thank me later!