True Mac Miller fans know about Pink Slime, even though they might wish they didn't. Pink Slime was the collaborative EP between Mac and Pharrell that was teased around 2012, but never came to fruition. Well, maybe it exists in some incomplete form on a hard drive somewhere, but it isn't in our possession. Therefore, it can be painful to think about. However, we did get a few tastes of this great synthesis with tracks, like "Onaroll" and "Glow", that made their way onto the Internet. The artists' busy schedules lead to the project being shelved, only to be recollected in the odd interview. In 2013, when Rolling Stone asked Mac about Pink Slime's status, he got people's hopes up when saying, "[Pharrell and I] actually just talked a couple days ago. I’m going to go see him [in Miami] and we’re going to finish it and put it out. Because the shit’s ill and people want it. We both had pretty wild years. We gotta do it!”
Craig Jenkins at Vulture recently asked Pharrell about his experience working with Mac Miller during those Pink Slime sessions. Pharrell gave a very thoughtful response about how talented Mac was and how, devastatingly, Mac often felt that that went unrecognized.
"I just remember him being a fan of music and wanting to go deeper and challenge himself. He was really independent in the rap game, but he liked Tribe and all the jazzy shit, and he liked a lot of the stuff we did that’s jazz-influenced, rap records that had those kinds of colors and chords. And he wanted to know more about it. He wanted people to know that there was way more to him than his indie-rap success. He wanted people to know the layers and the depth of his potential. But I would always tell him, 'Who cares that they know? Why is it not an amazing gift that you know this about yourself so much so that you do these things?' And that was the question he could never answer. It was the question I don’t think he was gonna be able to answer. He was so focused on that quest that he really didn’t have time to answer. He wanted people to know and I think people knew, but there was no way of saying it in a really unified, loud way that would make him go, 'Oh, okay, so you guys get who I am. Okay, cool, great.' The albums did well. It’s not like they weren’t telling him then, but I don’t know if he was ever gonna hear it."
