For most of this 2010s, Meek Mill has been one of my favorite currently active rappers, but for most of that time he's felt like a relative underdog in the major label world, an east coast street rap throwback who doesn't sound like his contemporaries and lost career momentum to beefs and jail time. So it feels vindicating to approach the end of the decade with Meek in the clear legally, coming off of the biggest album of his career, inking a deal with Roc Nation for his Dreamchasers imprint, and launching the Amazon documentary series "Free Meek" this week.

Meek Mill deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Traumatized
2. Flexing
3. Championships
4. Lil N**** Snupe
5. We Ball featuring Young Thug
6. Middle Of Da Summer featuring Mel Love
7. Lord Knows featuring Tory Lanez
8. Stuck In My Ways
9. A1 Everything featuring Kendrick Lamar
10. Who Your Around featuring Mary J. Blige
11. Jump Out The Face featuring Future
12. I'm Me
13. Fuck That Check Up featuring Lil Uzi Vert
14. Cold Hearted featuring Diddy
15. Tony Story
16. Tony Story, Pt. 2
17. Tony Story 3
18. What's Free featuring Rick Ross and Jay-Z
19. 1942 Flows

Tracks 6, 12 and 15 from Dreamchasers (2011)
Tracks 2 and 9 from Dreamchasers 2 (2012)
Tracks 1, 9 and 16 from Dreams & Nightmares (2012)
Track 4 from Dreamchasers 3 (2013)
Tracks 7, 11 and 14 from Dreams Worth More Than Money (2015)
Track 17 from DC4 (2016)
Track 5, 13 and 19 from Wins & Losses (2017)
Tracks 3, 8 and 18 from Championships (2018)

I decided to mix music from Meek's four studio albums together with his four Dreamchasers mixtapes. The first three tapes in the series were originally only streaming on mixtape sites, but at some point in 2018 they came to Spotify and the other services, and it appears it was done officially by Meek himself, which is pretty great. Those tapes are basically major label-quality albums and did a lot for his career -- Dreamchasers 2 broke records on DatPiff at the time and is still one of the site's most streamed projects ever. It'd be cool to have some tracks from Meek's pre-MMG mixtapes like Mr. Philadelphia and the Flamers series, but that stuff's not on Spotify, maybe someday.

One of Meek Mill's early Dreamchasers signings, Lil Snupe, was killed in 2013. And Meek's tribute to Snupe released 3 months later on Dreamchasers 3 is still I think the most harrowing and passionate song he's ever made, you hear all the frustration and rage of Meek trying to make this talented 18-year-old kid a star and then he gets gunned down. And it made sense to put "We Ball" with Young Thug after that, it kind of picks right up on that train of thought about Snupe. Meek Mill and Young Thug aren't necessarily a duo that people think of often or would want to do a whole project together, but they've got at least like 8 songs together and they're all pretty good, so I wanted to include at least one of those.

One of the most interesting things to me about Meek Mill's catalog is that some of his best and most popular songs are produced by a pair of brothers from Philadelphia who make beats separately. Orlando "Jahlil Beats" Tucker produced Meek Mill's breakthrough hit "I'm A Boss" (as well as singles like "Amen," "Monster," and "Burn" and a lot of Flamers era mixtape tracks). And his younger brother Anthony "The Beat Bully" Tucker produced "Dreams & Nightmares" as well as "House Party." So I wanted to highlight some of the Tucker brothers' work with Meek on here: "Flexing," "Tony Story," and "Tony Story 3" are by Jahlil Beats, and "Middle Of Da Summer" and "I'm Me" are by The Beat Bully.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 07, 2019 at 11:52 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.