I Love Life, Thank You

<i>I Love Life, Thank You</i> is part of a trio of mixtapes—including <i>K.I.D.S.</i> and <i>Best Day Ever</i>—that led up to Miller’s first album, 2011’s <i>Blue Slide Park</i>. The style is there, as is the casual self-assuredness that made him so appealing: the good-time guy who could drop cosmic advice over well-lubricated, hours-long sessions of Super Smash Bros. You could hear the maturation, too: Just measure <i>K.I.D.S.</i>’s “Mirror mirror hangin’ on the wall/Who the flyest white boy of them all?” (“The Spins”) against the clubby bittersweetness of “Love Lost” or the classic swagger of “Willie Dynamite”, which even in 2011 had more to do with the boom-bap of Action Bronson and Freddie Gibbs than Miller’s more sophomoric peers. The title is in reference to his Twitter followers, who had at the time just crossed a million. Skills, you can learn; charm, you can’t fake.