Meek Mill has been in the headlines quite a bit recently. The MMG rapper recently took the Philadelphia police force to court over what he claimed was an unlawful arrest in 2012. Unfortunately Meek lost the case, which he accredited to an unrepresentative jury, saying “They ain’t from where I’m from. I [don't] really expect them to understand what I go through. I respect their decision, though.”
The rapper was also one of the first public figures to speak out about Donald Sterling, calling him "the definition of racism" before further discussing race issues in Las Vegas.
In a new interview with Complex, Meek spoke more in-depth on both the verdict of his lawsuit, Donald Sterling, and the hope that racism will begin to subside in the future.
Read some excerpts below.
On his suit:
The cops just came out on top. The cop I had a lawsuit on, he had about so many complaints about him. He got fired right after I sued them. But he didn’t get fired for me suing them. On the day of court it was like they just believed the cop. I didn’t know that cop had 80 priors when I sued them. I found that when my lawyer investigated and found that out. You know how it go in Federal Court. It’s a jury. They pick a jury. I respect the opinion of the jury but most of the people in the jury was White. They don’t really like understand. They might live on a farm, some of these people live in like suburban areas, they don’t understand the culture where I come from. All they gonna understand is, ‘He’s a cop and he’s not a cop.’ They just went with his word.
On police and racism:
I don’t dislike cops. I got family that’s cops, friends that’s cops. Why would I even take this amount of time to even do all this? I had to go to court from 9:00 AM to 4:00 AM everyday this week. I just don’t feel it man. That’s some old timer shit. Most of all the people that’s racist [are] 80 years old. They on their way out anyway. I see ten years from now all that shit’ll be erased in the world. That will be like the past.”
On his remarks about Donald Sterling:
I’m just against racist shit. I’m not racist. I do shows—I say like ‘nigga’ in my raps a lot—my shows are half White, half Black. I look at the White kids in the crowd they say ‘nigga’ to the song. They not saying it in a disappointing way. I allow it at my shows because if you’re not saying it in a form of disrespect, why take it that way?
On whether his views about race will be present in his new music:
I rap about that shit all the time-- about being judged. You don’t gotta be Black you could just be anybody. If a White kid move in my neighborhood in the hood where I’m from I don’t think he should be treated any different because he’s a different skin color or anything. In our hood it’s White, Black, everything. They might be into dirt bikes the way we into dirt bikes. We all ride together. We ride as one. If he fall and bust his head we gon’ sit there and wait for that guy to get up and make sure he in good shape no matter if he Black, White, Puerto Rican, anything. He’s still a human being.
Watch the full interview below.
