I’m a fan of Meek Mill. I’ve been a fan of him for a long time. One of my early mentors was from York Pennsylvania and he would always mention to me Philly rappers like Joey Jihad, Frank with the Grippers, Chic Raw and Meek Mill. He’d be like, “Go to YouTube and check them out.” So I did. Philly’s rap scene is amazing. Plenty of emcees, male and female who can flat out spit! Bar for bar, could eat any emcee who stood in front of them. I always thought Meek was one of the better ones. His flow was always ferocious, almost like a dog let off a chain. He’d just bark and bark and bark bars until someone yelled “stop.” I’ve watched many hours of Meek Mill rapping. Meek is dope.
With that said, Meek Mill is not a battle rapper! Not in any way, shape or form. No way, not at all. Meek Mill is not a battle rapper in the sense of what we’ve come to know battle rappers to be. To stand across from a man and spit rhymes off the top of the head aiming directly at your opponent until one person is declared a winner. These lines can be memorized, rehearsed and practiced before you came, but if your rhymes written then you would be boo’d immediately. Battle rap is something honorable. It’s truly a sport. You walk into the circle by yourself, stand eye to eye with your opponent and do everything in your power to be the last man standing.
So, this is where this beef thing confuses me. Meek knows he’s not a battle rapper. I’m sure that’s why he changed his stance from saying he would want to battle the winner of a Cassidy vs Murda Mook battle to “I just want to see them battle.” He honestly could not hang with Murda Mook or Cassidy when it comes to battle raps. These are people who do this for a living. A battle rapper is someone who makes their names by being the cleverest, the most precise and the most entertaining with their words. Meek is nice, but I can see him being demolished by any of the top battle rappers right now.
I assume this has to do with publicity. Meek has been studying under some of the best in the game. He knows that controversy brings attention, and what better time than now. His album “Dreams and Nightmares,” debuted #2 on the Billboard charts. With album sales being what they are today, any extra boost in promotion and publicity over the next four weeks would help out his sales a lot. If this is a publicity stunt, then cool. Ride the wave for as long as you can. Just don’t let this stunt go so far that Meek actually finds himself on stage battling Cassidy. See, that’s where things can go all kinds of wrong.
One more time for those in the cheap seats, Meek Mill is not a battle rapper! One more time for the haters, I’m a fan of Meek Mill. I genuinely love the work that this kid has put in. But he’s not a battle rapper. I’ve seen his YouTube videos. I’ve seen his “battles.” Those weren’t battles. Those were two people rapping at each other. Every once and a while, someone would say “shots fired at ya head,” or “I’ll pop you with the 9” and the crowd would yell out “Ooooooo!” But that wasn’t a battle! Loaded Lux vs Calicoe was a battle! Joey Jihad and Murda Mook was a battle. Jae Millz vs E Ness was a battle. Who has Meek really battled? Come on!
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Before Meek or someone in his camp lets this nonsense get to the point where he would have to back-up his words with an actual battle, then I hope someone would urge him to watch Cassidy’s battle with Freeway first.
Do remember, at the time,Free was new to the Roc and one of the many Philly heads who joined the team at the time. Freeway was known as the most dangerous emcee, lyrically on the team. So he was assigned to battle rap the young dude from Philly that Swizz Beatz keeps talking about named Cassidy. Money was bet, a location was secured and the battle was on. Now this is back in the day, so everyone didn’t have a camera then. This time, somebody in the room did have a video tape recorder and taped every minute of what would become classic battle. Meek would be smart to watch what happened to Freeway.
Free, like Meek is great lyrically. He can hold his own with anyone, bar for bar. But Free was not a battle rapper. Cassidy, was a battle rapper. Cassidy know you and your style before he walked in. He would know how you would come at him, he would’ve practiced that. He would’ve studied his rhymes, his rhyme pattern. He treats a battle like surgery. Every cut is exact, no errors. Cassidy destroyed Freeway. He murdered Free to the point that mid-battle Free was asking for someone to throw on a beat. And unlike Free, Meek lives in the day of the Internet. Where the Cassidy/Free video was something you had to find from a bootlegger who would lay out all his Cd’s and dvd’s on a dirty blanket on some corner in the hood. If Cass bodies Meek this time, it will be world-wide news in hours.
Meek is a great rapper. But a battle rapper he is not. Playing games with the media and the public has its benefits, but it also has its downside. There’s nothing for him to win and everything for him to loose and that L could be a tough one take.
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