Music / Meek Mill

"Cause Tony he done killed his first cousin
If he let somebody else do it it won't mean nothin'
He wanna' see him bleedin', he wanna see him gaspin'
Wanna' watch him die slow, like he sufferin' from cancer"

— Meek Mill, "Tony Story"

Robert Rihmeek Williams (born May 6, 1987), better known by his stage name Meek Mill, is a Philadelphia-born rapper known for his loud, energetic delivery. He is currently signed to Rick Ross's Maybach Music Group.

Meek started rapping when he was a teenager. He put out several mixtapes, eventually attracting the attention of T.I.'s Grand Hustle Records. He signed with the older rapper for a brief period of time, but, unfortunately, their respective legal troubles and imprisonment make further collaboration difficult. He left the label in 2010.

A year later, Meek joined Rick Ross's record label, Maybach Music. The two had previously collaborated on on a song from Flamerz 3. He released his debut single, "Tupac Back", on Maybach's Self Made Vol. 1 compilation album. He would go on to release the Dreamchasers series of mixtapes and his first album, Dreams and Nightmares. His second album, Dreams Worth More Than Money, was released on June 29, 2015.

Like most rappers from his label, Meek's subject matter largely consists of songs about streets and clubs. What makes him stand out among them is the overall tone of his music. While he's made plenty of bragging songs, a large portion of his work—with topics ranging from watching his neighbor turn into a cocaine addict to vowing revenge against the man that killed his father—takes a realistic and gritty approach to street life. The page quote itself is taken from a song about a young gangster who killed his friend for a kilogram of cocaine.

He has also dabbled in acting, including a major role in the drama Charm City Kings.

Mixtapes:

• Flamers (2008)
• Flamers 2: Hottest In Tha City (2009)
• Flamers 2.5: The Preview (2009)
• Flamers 3: The Wait Is Over (2010)
• Mr. Philadelphia (2010)
• Dreamchasers (2011)
• Dreamchasers 2 (2012)
• Dreamchasers 3 (2013)
• 4/4 (2016)
• DC4 (2016)

Albums:

• Dreams and Nightmares (2012)
• Dreams Worth More Than Money (2015)
• Wins and Losses (2017)
• Championships (2018)

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Meek Mill provides examples of:

• Boastful Rap: A lot of his stuff. "Amen" and "Tupac Back" are particularly overblown examples.
• Blasphemous Boast: "Amen" contains lines like "Now there's a lot of bad bitches in the building (ooh, amen)", "Pull up in that Phantom, watch them bitches catch the Holy Ghost", and "She wanna fuck and I say church (preach)". Its lyrics led a pastor to call for a boycott on Meek's music.
  • "Tupac Back" could be seen as a hip-hop culture version of this. It isn't blatantly disrespectful to the rapper in its title, but simply comparing themselves to him angered some people who thought Meek and Ross were far below him as artists.
• Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster! / Being Evil Sucks: Depending on the song.
• Drugs Are Bad: Cocaine is generally portrayed negatively, at least on the side of consumption. Alcohol and marijuana occasionally get mentioned in a somewhat critical light.
• Drugs Are Good: Done with alcohol, marijuana, promethazine with codeine (lean), oxycodone (percocet), and, outside of his music, Monster Energy.
• Freestyle Version: Meek is a big fan of this. He often keeps the original name, or something very similar to it.
  • “Yall Dont Hear Me” — Fabolous
  • "No Church in the Wild" — Jay-Z and Kanye West
  • "Niggas in Paris" — Jay-Z and Kanye West
  • "Hard in Da Paint" — Waka Flocka Flame
  • "Power" — Kanye West
  • "Moment 4 Life" — Nicki Minaj
  • "Roman's Revenge" — Nicki Minaj
  • "Ooh Kill Em" — Beat sampled from "Forgot About Dre" by Eminem and Dr. Dre.
  • "Dreams Worth More Than Money Freestyle" — Beat sampled from "Ghetto Symphony" by A$AP Rocky.
• Gangsta Rap: Types 1, 2, and 3. Examples below.
  • Type 1: "Tony Story", "Traumatized", and "Hip Hop".
  • Type 2: "Work" and "Ima Boss".
  • Type 3: "In God We Trust", "Dreams and Nightmares", and "Chiraq".
• Glam Rap: "House Party", "Amen", and others.
• Humiliation Conga: From about 2015 to 2017, Meek was the punching bag of the rap community, mainly due to getting steamrolled by other rappers he picked a fight with:
  • First, his feud with Drake, which allegedly stemmed from Drake not helping promote Dreams Worth More Than Money. Meek claimed Drake used a ghostwriter on their collaboration "R.I.C.O.", which spurred drake to release "Charged Up" and "Back to Back" near-simultaneously in response. Meek responded with "Wanna Know", but the wider hip-hop community declared Drake the winner, and Meek would also be stymied by a copyright takedown, courtesy of WWE, for illegally sampling The Undertaker's theme music. Drake would proceed to run a victory lap well into 2016, and also dropped "Summer Sixteen" as extra salt in the wound en route to releasing Views to wild critical and commercial success.
  • Meek's woes didn't end in 2016, as he also ended up on the wrong side of The Game, who publicly accused him of ratting him out over an alleged robbery involving Sean Kingston, and then proceeded to release "92 Bars" not long afterwards. Meek quickly replied with a remix of Young MA's "Ooouuu", but The Game would retaliate again with "Pest Control", which pretty much ended any pretenses of Meek winning the feud. 50 Cent would end up getting dragged into the mix after being dissed on an EP Meek released earlier that year. 50 responded by releasing a series of memes mocking his fallen status among the hip hop community, instead of outright dissing him.
  • In 2017, after a good two years of being hip-hop's Butt-Monkey, Meek's fortunes hit a new low, having been put in prison in March of that year under questionable circumstances by a judge. Both Drake and The Game would squash their respective beefs with Meek, and campaign for his release from prison.
• The Lancer: To Rick Ross
• Mood Whiplash: The intro track of the same name on Dreams and Nightmares starts off as a peaceful, lighthearted Glam Rap. A third of the way through, it abruptly switches to hardcore street rap, with no transition or warning of any kind. This leads into the extremely dark "In God We Trust".
• Motor Mouth: Employed impressively in his verse on "No Games (Remix)". Meek frequently expresses himself with this style.
• Mugging the Monster: Many people claim that Meek started beef with Drake because of Drake’s reputation. They believed that Meek felt that because Drake had a reputation for being soft that he wasn’t going to be a skilled rapper when it came to beef. Meek was proven wrong when Drake released his song “Back 2 Back.”
• No Honor Among Thieves: A very common element of his more introspective work.
  I asked God please remove my enemies
  I was surprised when I lost niggas that was friends of me
  • The street war in "Tony Story" and "Tony Story, Pt.2" is kicked off when a young gang-banger kills his best friend for a kilo of cocaine. The leads to retaliation from the victim's cousin, and the situation escalates from there.
• No Inside Voice: While his reputation for loudly yelling on every single track is somewhat undeserved, Meek often raps in an extremely aggressive manner. This is either headache-inducing or impressive, depending on who you ask.
• Parental Abandonment: Discussed in "Love Don't Live Here". The second verse is about a teenage prostitute who was molested by her stepfather.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Rick Ross is calm and collected, while Meek's delivery ranges from energetic to completely unhinged.
• Take That!: "Ooh Kill Em" to Kendrick Lamar:
  You do it for the nigga with the backpack
  I do it for the niggas on the corner
  Tryna make a meal ticket with a crack pack
  • "Wanna Know" and "War Pain" is this to Drake, who he accused of hiring ghostwriters to write his songs and for not promoting his album Dreams Worth More Than Money, in which Drake was a featured artist for "R.I.C.O.", though the two have since ended their bad blood.
• The Unintelligible: Has a (somewhat overstated) reputation for this, along with having No Inside Voice.
• Trap Music: "Flamers" is full of this.

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