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Mac Miller “didn’t deserve his demons”, his ex-girlfriend Ariana Grande has said.
The rapper died following an accidental overdose last year, leading to a few months Ariana doesn’t remember “because I was so drunk”, she told Vogue.
The 26-year-old says “for such a long time” she was Mac’s glue, helping him cope with addiction struggles, “and I found myself becoming less and less sticky”.
“He was the best person ever.”
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Mac Miller died in September 2018
When Mac, real name Malcolm McCormick, was arrested for drink driving in May 2018 a few months before his death, some fans tried to blame Ariana for breaking up with him.
She spoke out in response, saying that “shaming/blaming women for a man’s inability to keep it together is a very major problem.
“Let’s please stop doing that.”
Ariana has rarely spoken about her relationship with Mac, but told Vogue those tweets came from “a place of complete defeat”.
“People don’t see any of the real stuff that happens, so they are loud about what they think happened.
“You have no idea how many times I warned him that that would happen and fought that fight, for how many years of our friendship, of our relationship.”
She described her grief over Mac’s death as “pretty all-consuming”.
“By no means was what we had perfect.
“He was the best person ever, and he didn’t deserve the demons he had. I was the glue for such a long time, and I found myself becoming… less and less sticky. The pieces just started to float away.”
Mac, who died aged 26, had always been open about his issues with substance abuse.
He focused on it in his Grammy-nominated album Swimming, which was released a few weeks after his break-up with Ariana was made public.
She explains that her friends encouraged her to move to New York following Mac’s death, where she wrote chart-topping album Thank U, Next partly in response.
“But if I’m completely honest, I don’t remember those months of my life because I was (a) so drunk and (b) so sad. I don’t really remember how it started or how it finished, or how all of a sudden there were 10 songs on the board.”
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Mac Miller performed on stage at One Love Manchester, Ariana Grande’s concert following the Manchester bombing in 2017
Ariana also touched on her engagement to comedian Pete Davidson, which ended shortly after Mac’s death.
She called the relationship “an amazing distraction” following events of the past few years, including the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017.
“It was frivolous and fun and insane and highly unrealistic, and I loved him, and I didn’t know him. I’m like an infant when it comes to real life and this old soul, been-around-the-block-a-million-times artist. I still don’t trust myself with the life stuff.”
For Ariana, Thank U, Next was also a moment of “self-realisation” about being “boo’d up my entire adult life”.
“It was this scary moment of ‘Wow, you have to face all this stuff now. No more distractions.”
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