When evaluating the relative positive qualities of a rapper, “mic presence” is an exceptionally difficult attribute to explain, qualify, quantify, or just generally elucidate as a thing that exists. We’re not talking the technical recording term here – rather, we’re after the bastard cousin of “stage presence”, something that almost-but-not-quite translates to “do you, as a rapper, appeal to the audience?” It’s not that easy, though – even the most avid Lil B hater would admit that he has mic presence in spades on pretty much everything he releases, and there are plenty of Nas tracks where he might as well be just some dude, so maybe a more formal definition would be something like “how much does the persona of this rapper shine through on this given song?” But that doesn’t cover it fully, either – you can have a song with multiple different rappers, each with their own relatively distinct style, where one guy clearly has about 100 times the presence of the other two. I’ve used the “I know it when I see it” analogy before, but it holds here, too; it’s one of those things where it’s easiest to point to existing things and just kind of gut-feel it out. (“Gut” is pretty apt, because it actually tends to be a pretty accurate stereotype that – shall we say – heavier rappers tend to excel in mic presence – Biggie, Rick Ross, Action Bronson, etc., and then in a completely different manner, Fred Da Godson – if you count reliably making bad songs as a subcategory of presence.)
With that in mind, probably my favorite example of “mic presence” is this:
This is a song by The Jacka. The Jacka does two verses and the hook. Of the four minutes in the runtime of this song, you spend roughly three of them listening to The Jacka. By contrast, Andre Nickatina appears for roughly 18 seconds, rapping 1 verse consisting of 8 bars. If we go to the YouTube comments, though, we find:
“nickatina kills it”
“nik”
“My cousins from the Bay got me into Nikatina”
“Nicky T brings it hard on this track”
And the funny thing is, they’re right. It’s not that The Jacka acquits himself poorly. It’s not even that Nickatina’s rhymes are anything special. It’s just that in less than 20 seconds, he manages to ooze cool even to observers with no idea who he is. (And if you do know who he is, you realize there’s something like 20 years of established cool to back the whole thing up.) It’s mic presence in a nutshell – the art of owning a song, even if you aren’t its primary creator.
Which brings us, in turn, to the track in the title of this post:
This is a song by Mac Miller, made in a phase of his career that I described to a friend of mine, familiar with his Donald Trump-era incarnation, as “I think he just decided to move to LA, do a bunch of drugs and make music out of a closet in a mansion or something.” Mac Miller does not acquit himself poorly on this song. (In fact, the entirety of Faces is well worth checking out.) But around the 2:48 mark, something amazing happens. It’s not a song by Mac Miller anymore; rather, it’s a song by Mike Jones.
Who?
Mike Jones, and now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s actually kind of ridiculous that he can still take over a track despite having basically disappeared for over half a decade, relegated to ephemeral appearances at frat parties leaving attendees wondering if it was actually him and interview question bait for his former labelmates who actually kept releasing music. A fairly significant part of the appeal of the whole thing is that he’s rapping like it’s still 2005; he’s able to hit all the requisite checkboxes on the “Mike Jones guest appearance” form after all these years:
– Repeat at least one of his lines: YES [X] NO [ ]
– Say his own name at least once: YES [X] NO [ ]
– Make some reference to “Still Tippin’“, or his verse therein: YES [X] NO [ ]
There’s not really a concrete reason why it’s so compelling to hear Mike Jones on this track, and admittedly, part of the appeal of the whole thing is probably an overreaction to exactly how far off he is from Mac Miller on a hypothetical rapper version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (“Six Degrees of Kevin Gates”?); nowhere in the description of “ascendant blog/frat-rap superstar white kid from Pittsburgh turned introspective LA stoner rapper” do you hear any callbacks to “Swishahouse one hit wonder from a decade ago.” For about 30 seconds, though, none of that matters; it’s Houston ascendancy again, American Dream is coming soon, and we’re trying to dial up 281-330-8004 on the low. Call it Mike presence*.
*sorry
Dry Roasted Peanut Gallery 
