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MTV2 gets the dope on Mac Miller, pals
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Mac Miller, front, with, from left, Quentin Cuff, Jimmy Murton, Big Dave and Peanut hang out in LA for the MTV2 reality show "Mac Miller and the Most Dope Family."
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The pitch could have been done in four words: " 'Entourage' with a rapper."
That's the premise of "Mac Miller and the Most Dope Family," a six-episode reality series premiering at 11:30 p.m. Tuesday on MTV2, a network that has been high on the Pittsburgh rapper (pardon the pun) since he started to break out in the spring of 2011 with "Donald Trump."
The Allderdice grad had a nice middle-class half-Jewish upbringing in Point Breeze. Now he's running wild with his Pittsburgh posse in a gated hillside LA mansion earned with his constant touring, chart-topping "Blue Slide Park" and, of course, extras like a reality show on MTV2.
When: 11:30 p.m. Tuesday on MTV2.
When we first see Mac and the boys, they're hitting golf balls off the roof down onto a street below, barely missing a passing car. We quickly learn that the rapper who gave us "Party on Fifth Ave" is more the party crasher than party thrower. If we can believe him, he's never actually thrown a party, but that's about to change with the Dec. 21 end for civilization deadline looming.
The Most Dope crew -- Quentin (Cuff), Jimmy (Murton), Peanut and bodyguard Big Dave -- swings into party planning mode, which includes a quick stop for a pre-party Tarot reading and an attempt to appease, with Jimmy's very buttery cookies, a neighboring couple who lose sleep every night when Mac is bumping tracks in his studio. They are not as funny or accommodating as Ozzy's old neighbor, Pat Boone.
Sure enough, the police show up, but that's OK, because so does a spiky-haired Miley Cyrus and the Odd Future guys (talk about weird combinations), and after what looks like a lively success (thanks, in part, to "The Electric Slide"), they all wake up with the world still intact.
The local audience will want to see the Pittsburgh homecoming episode, which shows the rapper as the ill-mannered cut-up around the house, with a happy, artsy mom who adores him nonetheless. Among the places they go is the abandoned Squirrel Hill Theater, which he considers buying for $2.4 million to relaunch as a theater and restaurant. (According to a Most Dope-enough source, there is no further progress on that sale, as the rap star has all he can handle with touring and completion of his second album, "Watching Movies With the Sound Off.")
Those who like Mac Miller for, you know, his frenetic hip-hop jams get some in this segment, as the Most Dope crew injects some life into the Slippery Rock University campus.
The boys are all amusing and watchable enough, especially Big Dave, a gentle giant who's funny without trying very hard. (At one stop, they have to wait somewhere while he slowly finishes his cup of water.) As the series goes on, let's hope for some more conflict (fabricated or otherwise), not to mention the Ari character, a role that could have been filled nicely by Rostrum head Benjy Grinberg.
"Mac Miller and the Most Dope Family" will be launched with a weekend takeover on the two networks. On Saturday, he gives fans a behind-the-scenes look at his mansion during a special airing of "Jackass: The Movie" at 10 p.m. on MTV. On Sunday, MTV2 goes "wall-to-wall Most Dope" with Miller featured in "The Dub Magazine Project" at 10 a.m., "The Week in Jams" at 11 a.m., "When I Was Seventeen" at 1 p.m. and "MTV2's Guy Code" at 3 p.m.
First Published February 22, 2013 12:00 am
