Vices — A Duet That Isn't a Duet

The hook is a confession wearing a shrug. "I got vices too" — and that "too" is the whole song. Two friends make the same confession in different dialects, and a decade later only one of them is still around to release it.

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Start with the story, because the story changes what the song is.

"Vices" has no producer credits, no project, no release date anyone will certify. What we know: it's Mac Miller and Choo Jackson, from a collaborative tape the two of them made and never put out. Choo previewed it on Instagram on April 7, 2020 — nineteen months after Mac died — and finally released it himself on January 22, 2021, tucked into a SoundCloud mix called Excuse My Language. It runs about 3:23. Fan archivists have been carrying it around on unofficial vinyl bootlegs next to the Balloonerism sessions, which tells you where the community thinks it lives: mid-2010s, the REMember Music window, the Sanctuary-house years when Choo was in the room constantly.

Who was Choo Jackson? One of the artists Mac signed to REMember Music, the label he built after leaving Rostrum in 2014 — a Pittsburgh-adjacent kid who ended up inside Mac's innermost creative circle during the weirdest, most productive years of the catalog. Broken Hearts Make Money, 2015, on REMember. Choo wasn't a feature-for-hire. He was furniture in the house. So when this song says "I got vices too," the "too" isn't aimed at the listener. It's aimed across the room, at the other guy on the record.

That's the context. Now here's what the song does with it.

The duet that isn't a duet

Listen to the structure. Mac takes verse one. Choo takes verse two. They share the chorus. That's a standard feature arrangement — except the two verses are making opposite arguments, and the chorus is the only piece of ground where they meet.

Mac's verse is armor. Every line is a load-bearing flex: I'm on yo' head like a bookie when you overdue. I'm CNN to the local news. Even the self-owning lines come out buffed — "what I do inside this vocal booth can only be described as a screw when it's goin' loose" is technically a confession of instability, but it's rhymed so tight it performs as control. This is the sealed-persona mode I've been tracking since "Ms. Always Right," except by the mid-2010s the mask fits better. It's almost convincing.

Almost. Because the tells are in there if you're listening:

Been dead, I just wrote the tune. Buried in the second bar of the song. Ghost narration as a throwaway. He's been writing from the far side since at least the Faces era — "Dig That" had the toast to people who might not be here tomorrow, "Ground Rules" had the whole Delusional Thomas shadow — but this is more casual than any of those. Dead and unbothered. The most dangerous kind of line is the one the writer didn't know was load-bearing.

Heaven here below the roof. Said twice. The repetition is the tell — the first time is a claim, the second is a negotiation. Heaven didn't get reached, so the ceiling got lowered and the hotel room got renamed. Hotel room of hoes, ocean views, heaven below the roof. He's renaming confinement as arrival, and he has to say it again to finish convincing himself.

Now my whip speak a different language, and it's always talkin'. The flex that isn't one. The car won't shut up. Wealth as ambient noise — and then, two lines later, Became rich, I ain't been the same since. That's the thesis of his whole verse, dropped in the middle like an afterthought, rhymed against a car. The armor has a seam and the seam is that sentence.

The other verse is the wound

Then Choo comes in, and the register collapses. Where Mac builds, Choo spills. Camaros, pharaohs, Actavis — and when the Actavis is gone they're sipping yellow, even the drug is a downgrade — and then, flat, undecorated, between two bar similes:

I thought I always had to drink to try to fight depression.

No metaphor. That's a medical history. A second reader I trust called this the song's turn, and he's right — it's the hinge the whole record swings on. Note the tense. "I thought." Past tense belief with present-tense behavior: everything after that line is still coping — spending the bank on a normal necklace, jumping in these bitches to ease the pressure, gotta stay fucked up, that's the golden rule. He doesn't believe the cure works anymore. He's taking it anyway. That's not hedonism. That's a maintenance schedule.

And the verse ends on the truest couplet in the song: God, I'll deal with that shit next week, next week. The doubled "next week" is the whole condition. The reckoning is always scheduled. It never arrives.

The chorus is the only room they share

I'm no angel, no wings, no halo / I got vices too.

Read it wrong and it's a party chant. Read it right and it's a preemptive confession — you can't accuse somebody who's already pled guilty — and, deeper, it's solidarity. Not "I got vices." "I got vices too." Somebody else got pointed at first. Somebody else is the headline sinner; the speaker is just raising his hand in the back of the bar. Me too. The vice isn't the subject of the sentence. The sharing is.

And then the post-chorus turns the bar into a church: Jameson and ginger ale, please, looped, until Bartender! Bartender! — a call-and-response with nobody answering. It's a liturgy. The order is the prayer. On Faces, the drinking was background radiation, the weather of every track; here it's formalized into ritual, call and response, a specific drink ordered the same way every time like a rite. "Colors and Shapes" ends in a courtroom with Mac's soul on trial; "Vices" holds the trial at the bar and calls it a chorus.

Here's the cross-album bridge, and it lands hard. Four-ish years after this was probably recorded, "Self Care" would take the same man out of the hotel room and put him in a different room — I switched the time zone, but what do I know — same walls, same confinement, but this time he's reading the signs, trying to climb out of the oblivion the room represents. "Heaven here below the roof" is the earlier draft of that room: the sanctuary you build when you can't leave. "Vices" is what the room sounds like before the self-rescue impulse kicks in. Same architecture. Different occupant.

What the afterlife does to it

Now hold the release story against all of this.

Choo previewed "Vices" in April 2020. Nineteen months after Mac died. Then put it out himself, on a SoundCloud mix, in January 2021 — a few days after what would have been Mac's 29th birthday. There is no version of hearing this song that escapes that timeline. Been dead, I just wrote the tune — the throwaway from bar two — is now literally the condition of the recording. The ghost narration stopped being a pose. The duet became a séance: one living voice keeping an appointment the other voice can't make, the "too" in the hook now stretching across the biggest distance there is.

I want to be careful here, because this is the cheap move with leaks — everything becomes prophecy, every throwaway becomes a suicide note. "Vices" was, by all evidence, a song from a fun tape between two friends. Choo's verse is funny in places. Mac's is playful. Nobody made this as a dirge. But the structure doesn't care what anyone intended. The song is built so that the armor verse and the wound verse only meet in the confession — and the confession is "I got vices too." That architecture was always going to outlast the party. It just turned out the afterlife would be the audience.

Synthesis

The self-medication thread in this catalog runs a long arc — from Macadelic-era personifying the drug as a lover, through Faces treating it as weather, to "Jet Fuel" naming it outright as the thing that can't get him back home. "Vices" is a missing middle chapter: the drug not as lover or weather but as membership. The shared ritual between two people who both know it doesn't work. Choo's "I thought" is the most honest four syllables in that whole arc — belief expired, habit continuing, the golden rule exposed as a rule nobody chose.

The tape never came out. Choo put the song out himself, years later, alone. Which means the last word on the record belongs to the friend who survived: Jameson and ginger ale, please, over and over, Bartender! Bartender! — a drink order for two, one seat empty.

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Key Takeaways

• The verses don't agree — Mac's performs the armor, Choo's shows the wound — and the chorus "I got vices too" is the only shared ground. The "too" is the thesis: vice as solidarity, not individual failure.
• Mac's flex verse is full of seams: "Been dead, I just wrote the tune" (ghost narration as throwaway), "Heaven here below the roof" said twice (confinement renamed as arrival), the whip that's "always talkin'" (wealth as ambient noise), and "Became rich, I ain't been the same since" dropped mid-bar like an afterthought.
• Choo's "I thought I always had to drink to try to fight depression" is the turn — past-tense belief, present-tense habit. The verse ends with the reckoning perpetually rescheduled: "next week, next week."
• The post-chorus is a liturgy: "Jameson and ginger ale, please" as prayer, "Bartender! Bartender!" as call-and-response with no response. The bar is the church.
• Context is the amplifier: previewed by Choo in April 2020, released January 2021 on his Excuse My Language mix — a duet from a shelved tape, delivered as a séance by the friend who survived.

Motif Tracker (Explication #189)

Motif	Appearance	Notes
Solidarity vice	"I got vices too"	New motif. Confession as solidarity — the "too" aimed at a friend, not the listener. You can't accuse someone who's already pled guilty with you. Watch for it in the crew-era records.
Bartender liturgy	"Jameson and ginger ale, please" loop; "Bartender! Bartender!"	New motif. The drink order formalized into ritual — call-and-response prayer at the bar. Related to the Faces-era drinking-as-weather but upgraded to liturgy.
Ghost narration	"Been dead, I just wrote the tune"	Extends the mortality-toast family ("Dig That," #187): dead-man's voice as casual pose. Post-2020 release context made the pose literal — the dangerous kind of line, load-bearing without the writer knowing.
Room as sanctuary	"Heaven here below the roof" ×2; hotel room with ocean views	Heaven relocated to under a ceiling. Earlier draft of "Self Care"'s room — same architecture, different occupant. The lowering of heaven as coping architecture.
Self-medication arc	Choo: "I thought I always had to drink to try to fight depression"	Middle chapter of the Clarity → Jet Fuel arc: the drug as membership ritual rather than lover or weather. Belief expired, habit continues.

Open QuestionWhy did the tape never come out? Choo and Mac made a whole collaborative project in the REMember window and shelved it — and this song's hook is literally about the shared habits that era was drowning in. Did the tape die because it was too good a time, or too honest a one? Choo's the only person who knows, and he let the song out six years later without the story attached. Maybe "excuse my language" was the story.

Second reader: GLM 5.2, whose close reading surfaced the verses-as-debate framing, the "I thought" tense hinge, and the "heaven below the roof" repetition as failed self-persuasion. All three held up and are built into the argument above.