At one in the afternoon, kids were already lining up around the block in Denver's trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Nine-and-a-half hours later, Mac Miller is about to take the stage at the AEG Live-operated Ogden Theatre.

PHOTOS: The Mac Miller Cover Shoot

The official Denver landmark has a capacity of 1,700, and for 20 minutes, the sellout crowd, most in Miller T-shirts -- one of them says OY VEY HOLY COW OH MY GOD WOW -- has been creating various chants, each demanding the rapper's presence. The stage is dressed to resemble Pittsburgh's Blue Slide Park-complete with park bench, lamp posts and a DJ station disguised as an ice cream cart-since the name of the recreation area also doubles as the title for Miller's upcoming album.

Miller and his Most Dope crew are standing in a huddle offstage, arms around each other's shoulders. Miller leads a prayer that thanks God and asks that they "perform to the best of our abilities tonight."

The PA system blares to life. DJ Clockwork, who enters first, begins spinning Miller's song "Donald Trump." But shrieks drown out the tune's intro as teenagers in the front row whip out iPhones, ready to record the entire 90-minute set. Miller recites a few sporadic lines with the recording before exploding onto the stage with all the energy of his 19 years -- crew at his heels.

The audience loses its collective mind.

Miller then conducts an orchestra: not onstage, but off. Tearing through mixtape hits like 2010's "Nikes on My Feet" and 2011's "Knock Knock" he keeps the crowd's arms up and bouncing to Clockwork's rhythms as he zigzags the stage, pausing to collapse dramatically, out of breath. He jokes with the crowd, then thanks them for being the only reason for his success. He signs four Blue Slide Park caps and chucks them into the audience.

Just when all that energy plateaus, Clockwork pulls the plug on the music. Many in the crowd take the opportunity to check the phone photos they've snapped. Miller turns his back to them and picks up a white- and gold-plated Gretsch guitar. With as much ease as he leapt back and forth across the stage rapping, he launches into the intro to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama," then transitions quickly into a rendition of Weezer's "Say It Ain't So." It's difficult to discern whether the fans are more excited to experience "Frick Park Market" (Miller's latest single, which already has 10 million-plus YouTube views) or his next cover, Oasis' "Wonderwall."

"I want to be, like, Beatles big, when it's all said and done," Miller said earlier that day. "I want to change what's on the radio."

Who the hell is this kid?


Born Malcolm McCormick in Pittsburgh's Point Breeze neighborhood in 1992, Miller and his older brother were raised in a Jewish household by a photographer mother. He attended Catholic grade school-to ensure, he says, a good education and the chance to play football and lacrosse-even if that meant, as he marvels now, being forced by teachers to show his classmates how to have a Passover seder.

"I was never really a school-oriented person," says Miller, who later attended Taylor Allderdice High School, the alma mater of labelmate Wiz Khalifa. Instead, he and his friends, many of whom were older and attended different high schools, listened to a lot of old-school hip-hop. Acts like the Sugarhill Gang, A Tribe Called Quest and the Beastie Boys all inspired the model for much of Miller's material today. He pays homage with songs like "Blue Slide Park" single "Party on 5th Ave," which samples DJ Kool's "Let Me Clear My Throat."Meanwhile, in 2003, when Miller was 11, another Allderdice High alumnus and former executive assistant (from 2000 to 2003) to Antonio "L.A." Reid, Benjy Grinberg, was getting his new label, Rostrum Records, off the ground in Pittsburgh. He was a one-man operation until 2005, when he hired fellow Pittsburgh native and Allderdice alumnus Arthur Pitt as director of public relations. Today, Pitt is VP of the label.

Five years later, Miller played his first show, at a Pittsburgh bar called Moondog's, at age 16.

Because they were so young, "my homies couldn't even get in to see me," he says with a laugh. "The shows we used to do, you basically perform for other rappers and their friends . . . I think I've performed for two people before. Like, literally, two people."

Next: Mac Impresses Donald Trump and Prepares for Stardom