Raw, unfiltered, and deeply human, Comatose Red Ivy returns with one of their most powerful and emotionally resonant projects to date. Through the haunting single “Mac Milla” and the profoundly personal book Swimming In Circles: The Untold Story of Mac Miller, Ivy steps beyond tribute and into testimony—exploring grief, addiction, symbolism, and survival with fearless honesty.
What begins as admiration for Mac Miller evolves into a visceral examination of Malcolm McCormick’s final artistic chapters, intertwined with Ivy’s own lived experiences of love, trauma, and near-death. These works are not designed to glamorize pain or mythologize tragedy, but to decode truth, confront uncomfortable realities, and offer understanding to those who have lived in similar shadows.
In this exclusive interview, Comatose Red Ivy opens up about the emotional weight behind the music and the book, the concept of Oblivion, the thin line between drowning and swimming, and how art can become both a mirror and a lifeline.
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Hi Comatose Red Ivy, thanks a lot for being with us today! “Mac Milla” feels less like a tribute and more like a conversation across time. When you were writing the song, were you speaking more to Mac Miller the artist, Malcolm McCormick the human being, or to a part of yourself that found refuge in his music?
It was really all three, but mostly it was me talking to myself. When I one takefreestyled“MAC MILLA,” I wasn’t trying to pay tribute to Mac Miller the artist — I was reaching for what his music represented to me at the time (2021): softness, melody, and humanity in the middle of darkness.
Malcolm felt like a symbol of being able to hold pain without becoming cruel or numb, and that’s what I was afraid of losing in myself. So the song became a conversation across time without me realizing it — me reaching for light, not fame. Years later, Swimming In Circles helped me understand what that instinct was trying to warn me about.
The song carries both deep admiration and profound grief. How did you navigate honoring Mac’s legacy without romanticizing the pain and addiction that ultimately took his life?
With the song, the admiration isn’t for the pain or the addiction — it’s for the humanity and the soul in the music. “MAC MILLA” doesn’t glorify darkness; it openly resists it. I’m saying, I don’t want to be the evil I feel in me.
By the time I wrote Swimming In Circles, that awareness became even sharper. The book exists specifically to push back against romanticizing addiction, because once pain becomes aesthetic, people stop listening to the warning signs. Honoring Mac’s legacy, to me, means telling the truth — not polishing the tragedy.
Musically, “Mac Milla” is framed by melodic piano lines and a groovy yet restrained rhythm. How intentional was that balance between warmth and melancholy in supporting the emotional message of the song?
That balance was very intentional, even though the song itself was freestyled. I didn’t want the music to feel chaotic or aggressive — I wanted it to feel warm, almost safe, because the the freestyle is coming from a vulnerable place. The melody carries the hope, while the melancholy reflects the honesty of where I was mentally.
That tension between warmth and sadness mirrors the message of the song: reaching for something beautiful while standing in the middle of darkness.
Your vocal performance on this track feels especially intimate and vulnerable. Did recording “Mac Milla” require a different emotional or mental preparation compared to your other releases?
It didn’t require preparation in the traditional sense — it required honesty. Because it was freestyled, I didn’t have time to put up defenses or perform a version of myself. I just stepped into the moment and let it come out as it was.— it’s a snapshot of where I actually was.
In your book, you write about shifting from hearing Mac Miller to truly listening to Malcolm McCormick. Can you explain what that distinction means to you, and how it changed your understanding of Swimming and Circles?
For me, hearing Mac Miller was enjoying the music. Listening to Malcolm McCormick meant paying attention to the emotional patterns underneath it — the exhaustion, the searching, the quiet warnings.
When I started listening that way, Swimming and Circles stopped feeling like albums and started feeling like conversations about survival. That shift changed everything for me, because it revealed how easy it is to miss someone’s truth when we’re only consuming the art instead of listening to the human behind it.
You describe decoding symbolism, metaphors, and double entendres within Mac’s work as a kind of unraveling. At what point did this process stop being analysis and start becoming something deeply personal and painful?
It became personal when the patterns stopped feeling like theory and started mirroring my own life. Once I realized I wasn’t just analyzing lyrics but recognizing cycles of addiction, isolation, and exhaustion I had lived through myself, it stopped being academic.
That’s when the unraveling happened — because you can’t unsee those parallels, and listening turns into mourning, not just understanding.
The concept of Oblivion—as neither life nor death, but a protective cocoon of the mind—plays a powerful role in your book. How did recognizing this state in both Mac’s story and your own experience reshape how you view survival?
Recognizing Oblivion reframed survival for me. I stopped seeing it as weakness or giving up and understood it as the mind creating a buffer when reality becomes too overwhelming.
Seeing that state reflected in both Mac’s story and my own helped me realize that survival isn’t always about pushing forward — sometimes it’s about pausing inside that cocoon long enough to not disappear completely.
You’ve spoken about your own “Cyanide Dream” mirroring the red-hued symbolism found throughout Mac’s visual and lyrical world. How do you interpret the color red now—as danger, transformation, rebirth, or something else entirely?
I see red as all of those things at once. It’s danger, but it’s also transformation — the moment where something has to burn before it can change. In my “dream world”, Ivy’s Cyanide Dream, red wasn’t just warning, it was a threshold.
Connecting that with Mac’s symbolism helped me understand red as a signal of becoming — not death, but the painful, necessary heat of rebirth.
Writing Swimming In Circles clearly required revisiting trauma, addiction, and betrayal. What was the hardest truth you had to face about yourself while finishing this book sober?
The hardest truth was realizing how long I survived by romanticizing my own pain. Writing the book sober forced me to see where I had mistaken endurance for healing and chaos for meaning.
Letting go of that identity was painful, but it was necessary — because staying alive isn’t the same as actually living.
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You mention that this book wasn’t written to be marketed or glamorized. What do you hope readers feel or understand when they close the final page, especially those struggling with addiction or loss?
I hope they feel less alone, but also more honest with themselves. I don’t want the book to comfort people by softening the truth — I want it to clarify it.
If someone is struggling with addiction or loss, I hope they understand that pain doesn’t need to be romanticized to be meaningful, and that recognizing the patterns early can be an act of survival, not judgment.
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How do “Mac Milla” and Swimming In Circles complement each other artistically? Do you see the song as an emotional entry point and the book as the deeper excavation—or something more cyclical?
I see them as cyclical rather than linear. “Mac Milla” is instinct — an emotional pulse reaching for light before understanding why the darkness exists. Swimming In Circles is consciousness catching up to that instinct.
The song asks the question from inside the feeling. The book sits with the answer long enough to realize there isn’t a clean resolution — only awareness. In that way, they don’t complete each other; they keep each other honest.
Your work often lives at the intersection of art, survival, and documentation. Do you see yourself primarily as a musician, a writer, or a witness to lived truth—or are those roles inseparable for you now?
At this point, those roles are inseparable. I don’t wake up thinking of myself as a musician, a writer, or even a witness — I wake up as a human being trying to survive one day at a time.
The art, the writing, the documentation all come from that same place: paying attention while I’m still here. Whatever form it takes isn’t a role I choose as much as it’s a byproduct of living honestly and refusing to let the experience disappear without meaning.
After releasing such a personal song and book centered on someone else’s life and death, how has this project influenced your own healing journey—and where do you feel your art is heading next?
This project forced me to slow down and tell the truth without hiding behind performance or symbolism. Writing Swimming In Circles and revisiting “Mac Milla” didn’t heal me in a clean or triumphant way — it clarified me. It showed me where I had confused endurance with growth, and where I had been surviving by staying close to pain instead of learning how to live beyond it.
Centering the work around someone else’s life and death also taught me humility. I had to constantly check myself — my motives, my language, my projections — and that process reshaped how I relate to my own story.
It reminded me that healing isn’t about extracting meaning from tragedy for comfort; it’s about sitting with what’s unresolved and choosing not to romanticize it.
As for where my art is heading next, I feel less interested in explaining and more interested in listening — to myself, to silence, to whatever emerges when I’m not trying to prove anything. I still want to tell stories, but with less urgency and more presence. If this chapter was about witnessing and decoding, the next feels like integration — making art that doesn’t just survive the darkness, but knows when to step out of it.
CHECK THE LINKS BELOW, DISCOVER MORE ABOUT COMATOSE RED IVY, AND REMEMBER TO ADD THIS TALENTED ARTIST’S SONGS TO YOUR FAVORITE PLAYLISTS!
Amazon: “Swimming In Circles” Book
YouTube: Comatose Red Ivy
Facebook: Comatose Red Ivy
Spotify: Comatose Red Ivy
Apple Music: Comatose Red Ivy
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