“I think a lot of times people just want to be cool, and to be in love is not cool. But I think it’s the coolest,” Mac Miller told Vogue over shots of espresso in 2016. “I think love is the coolest thing that there is.”
The Divine Feminine — which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 — turned 10 in September and returned to the Billboard 200’s top 10 this week. The seminal album played an integral role in Miller’s artistic evolution from frat rapper to boundless musician, and saw the Pittsburgh native take a dreamy exploration into the complexities of love, intimacy and the “feminine energy of the planet,” as he put it.
Eight years after his tragic passing from an accidental drug overdose at the much-too-early age of 26, Mac Miller’s catalog is more relevant than ever. He posthumously dominated the summer behind a scorching commercial resurgence from The Divine Feminine‘s “Cinderella,” which became Miller’s second highest-charting single as a lead artist, reaching No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July.
“I felt like that was Mac talking from heaven, man,” Ty Dolla $ign, who delivers a lovestruck hook on “Cinderella,” his first official collaboration with Mac Miller, tells Billboard. “I felt like he was speaking down to us like, ‘I’m not done yet.’ It’s like Mariah Carey: every Christmas her song comes back, we having one of those moments.”
Falling hard for Ariana Grande fueled Mac’s eight-minute sultry expedition, which took form in early 2016 when Dahi sent a Sunni Colon guitar loop to the Pittsburgh rapper.
Dahi played the bassline with production from Aja Grant to complete the beautifully intoxicating instrumental and Mac got to writing a steamy diary entry about the girl of his dreams, pushing back against rap’s stereotypical machismo.
Recorded at EastWest Studios in L.A. and Encore Studios in Burbank, Calif., Mac showed off his raspy singing voice while playing an early version for Ty Dolla $ign, who he wanted to sprinkle his hook magic. “I remember being nervous while doing it,” Ty recalls. Mac wasn’t present while he laid down vocals to an extensive chorus, painting a steamy picture of the lead-up to a euphoric night with a woman he’s had his sights set on.
“You think about format — like, is this gonna play on the radio?” DJ Dahi remembers debates about cutting parts of Ty’s chorus to make the unconventional love song more digestible. “In my head, it’s like, ‘Maybe we should cut it’ — but you’re cutting half of what he said, so everyone was like, ‘Let’s just keep it.’ I loved it.”
Dahi adds: “That was Mac’s favorite song on the album. He was like, ‘Oh, this is really special.’ It’s a little bittersweet because he’s not here to see the fruits of what he did.”
Using love as a muse for creativity wasn’t foreign to Mac. He’s shown a penchant for lush arrangements and exploring the intricacies of romance earlier in his career on tracks like 2013’s Watching Movies With the Sound Off cuts “Youforia” and “Someone Like You.”
The Pittsburgh native turned the page on his high school sweetheart Nomi Leasure and entered new dating territory, a relationship with Ariana Grande, which started to percolate in early 2016. The spotlight surrounding Mac’s love life intensified, as his relationship piqued the interest of TMZ and other tabloids, along with the watchful eyes of millions of Arianators.
“I assumed it was [about Ariana],” Dahi said of “Cinderella.” “Not so much he was her muse, but when he’d write a song it was very current to what he was going through at the time. I don’t think she came to the studio. Sometimes he’d talk to her on the phone.”
Lyrics like, “I know you got expensive taste” made more sense when connected to the pop star. Mac Miller and Grande dated for about two years before splitting in May 2018. Later in the same month, in the pop star’s response to critics following Mac’s DUI arrest, Grande confirmed on X (formerly Twitter) that she was the subject of “Cinderella,” but not any other TDF tracks.
Fast-forward to May 2026, “Cinderella” experienced a seismic explosion, surging onto the Hot 100 thanks to a viral TikTok trend, which introduced The Divine Feminine track to a new generation of listeners.
Millions of Gen-Z and Millennial TikTok users made videos soundtracked by “Cinderella” highlighting a fairytale romance with their current partner, while others basked in the honeymoon phase and nostalgia of a previous relationship with throwback photos and heartwarming clips.
Videos would start with Mac’s vocals from the end of his second verse, “I yell your name, Cinderella/ Never gonna find nobody better, all my life,” leading into Ty’s lust-filled chorus, “I been waitin’ all night for this moment/ I been waitin’ all year for this moment.” Others turned “Cinderella” into a verb, captioning clips with versions of, “I’m so cinderella by Mac Miller about you.” As of late June, over 13 million videos were made using “Cinderella” on the platform.
“I used to hear people saying, ‘TikTok is the way, if it blows up on TikTok, it’s gonna blow up.’ Me being from my age group, I’m from the old way of music so I’m gonna wait to see if it really matters,” Dolla $ign says. “I can definitely see it now and I’ll sign my name on the contract that TikTok matters. It’s one of the resources you can use to take your record to the next level.”
Now why exactly did “Cinderella” blow up a decade later? That could be attributed to a multitude of factors. There’s been an appetite for 2016 nostalgia — a modern-age golden year in the zeitgeist — from hip-hop fans, as artists who dominated the era like Fetty Wap have seen a viral resurgence. Fetty’s “Again” returned to the Hot 100 at No. 41 in February 2025. In the modern age of music discovery, forgotten songs hitting the charts has become more commonplace, as tracks like Rihanna’s “Breakin’ Dishes” (2007) and Radiohead’s “Let Down” (1997) debuted on the Hot 100 last year.
Mac’s catalog is being streamed more now than when he was alive, as he boasts nearly 44 million monthly listeners on Spotify, the highest that total has ever been. Music’s mainstream is also currently less hospitable to hip-hop than its been in years past, leaving real estate up for grabs (Drake is the only rapper to post a top 10 Hot 100 hit as a lead artist in 2026).
As of Oct. 1, “Cinderella” has accumulated 495.5 million official on-demand streams in the U.S. Of that total, 237.1 million streams occurred in 2026 alone. “Cinderella” invaded the chart at No. 60 in mid-May and peaked at No. 25 in July. The track has continued to remain in the Hot 100’s top 50 in its 22 weeks on the chart. It’s also been climbing the Rhythmic Airplay chart, where “Cinderella” cracked the top 10 (No. 9) and is still gaining steam.
“It’s a little bittersweet because he’s’ not here to see the fruits of what he did,” Dahi states. “That’s the power of art. Instant gratification isn’t what we should be going for most of the time. You have to let s–t bake and the marathon [is where] you get to see how impactful it is.”
Along with the song’s reemergence, the “Cinderella” music video is on the receiving end of a second wind. Directed by Bo Mirhosseni, the 2017 visual now has over 27 million views.
“I know a lot of people that have worked with him say this, but one of the best dudes I’ve worked with just, like, not only was extremely professional on set and everything, but just down to experiment and do weird s–t,” says Mirhosseni.
“Cinderella” marked Mirhosseni’s first time working with Mac, as their relationship blossomed during an initial meet-up at the rapper’s house to discuss his vision for the hazy visual. Mirhosseni recalls being shocked at Mac’s deeper understanding of filmmaking as the director pitched him cinephile references like David Fincher’s mystery thriller The Game and Wong Kar-Wai’s 2000 film In the Mood for Love.
“He never got like into like you know celeb mode,” Mirhosseni says of Mac, adding that even when the budget ran out, the rapper came out of pocket to fund the rest of the visual. “He was committed 100 percent. He loved all my ideas, which is I was like, ‘All right, you’re allowed to say no.’”
Shot throughout one night in March 2017 at an East L.A. studio, Mac and Mirhosseni joined forces for a 12-minute, multi-part odyssey that depicts the rapper in a hallucinatory dream on the never-ending pursuit of an angel within his grasp, but one he can’t fully reel in.
Mac Miller’s family has been extremely judicious and delicate with the rapper’s legacy. The estate tastefully released a 10th anniversary edition of The Divine Feminine on Oct. 2, featuring three new tracks (“Butterflies,” “Grand” and “Channel 13”), which were recorded during sessions for TDF. The reissue resulted in the album vaulting from No. 159 up to No. 10 on this week’s Billboard 200.
With fans’ renewed interest in “Cinderella,” Ty Dolla $ign has been closing his shows with the 2016 Mac Miller collaboration while performing on Bryson Tiller’s The Neo Trapsoul Tour. But for Dolla $ign, time hasn’t healed the wound left by his close friend’s early departure.
“Every time I’ve performed it the last four or five times, it folds me inside. Mac was one of my good boys,” Dolla $ign, who met Mac through Wiz Khalifa in the early 2010s, explains. “He really cared about the same s–t I cared about. He was really about love, the music and taking it further than rapping.”
The 44-year-old candidly continues: “When [Mac] did pass, and we did the first concert at the Greek Theatre, that was the first time my daughter saw me cry. It folded me that day, and it folded me on Tiny Desk, and now every time it’s the one song I do and the crowd is going up, and I’m shedding tears and s–t. That’s the one death out of all of the deaths, including family members and best friends. That s–t just f–ks me up.”