How Meek Mill Can Bounce Back From His Summer Slump

At the end of June, things were looking better for Meek Mill than they had in a while. Having just been released from prison six months prior, he was dating the hottest and most talented female rapper in the game, and saw the long-delayed Dreams Worth More Than Money receive rave reviews and the number one spot on the Billboard 100. He had overcome plenty of adversity and was finally becoming an internationally-recognized star, but as had been the case with several other rappers before him, his fall from grace was initiated with some overeager Twitter fingers. 

What unfolded over the rest of the summer is a saga we all know well by this point, with Drake delivering haymaker after haymaker while all that Meek could muster as a response was the ineffective "Wanna Know" and some half-assed social media griping. Within days, he became the punchline of jokes and the subject of cruel memes, all but negating everything he had accomplished in the six months prior. 

A lot of this backlash seemed unfair, given how much praise Meek got for DWMTM, but such is the short attention span nature of the internet. People seem ready to declare him totally washed, but the only solo track he's released since the album is "Wanna Know," and although it doesn't hold a candle to "Back To Back," it's not that bad. It's not like we can say that the quality of his music has fallen off at this point though. 

With Dreamchasers 4 on the horizon, here are five things Meek can do to get the public back on his side. 

Look, the battle's over. Drake never dropped the third diss track that was rumored to follow "Charged Up" and "Back To Back," the latter of which was released just under four months ago. Any new track that's explicitly labeled a "Drake diss" will inevitably make Meek seem like the guy who thinks of a fire comeback hours after being dissed to his face-- he's missed his chance to win this in the arena of battle raps. Instead, he should carry on right now acting as if it had never happened. Don't mention Quentin, don't bring Nicki's name into this again, and don't bring up rumors about public urination, no matter how true they may or may not be. Anything after a certain point (which has long passed) is petty.

Once the ship is righted, Meek's career back on track, then he can reflect on this, hopefully a little older and wiser. We saw The Game successfully look back on his beef with 50 Cent on The Documentary 2, Rick Ross and Jeezy settle their differences like grown men on last year's "War Ready," ditto for Jay Z and Nas on "Black Republican." Meek seems a little too proud to ever call upon Drake for a "R.I.C.O." sequel, but give it a year or two, and I bet he can come back with something more incendiary than "Wanna Know."

If your solo career's struggling, start grinding on those features. It's a decades-old strategy, one that's been effective in restoring hype and keeping your name in the news, even if you're not ready to return to the proving ground of the album release cycle. Since the summer, Meek's quietly killed a number of tracks, ranging from Black Dollar highlight "Turn Ya Back," to a few electrifying spots on DJ Khaled's I've Changed A Lot. With the reputation as a loose cannon or a loudmouth, Meek shined on these because he was able to keep a relatively low profile, wowing audiences with his lyrical abilities while putting his personal bullshit to the side. At this point, there's very few people who still want to hear his side of the Drake debacle, but plenty who are still down for those sixteens we all know he was built to murder.

With this PR nightmare, Meek may have trouble getting verses on top-tier artists' tracks, as they probably want don't want to burn bridges with Drake, but that leaves him in a perfect position to bless up-and-comers with his presence. He's a noted fan of fellow Philadelphian Lil Uzi Vert, and no one can deny how amazing that collab would be. Meek's latest assist, coming on Tracy T's "Topless," might be his best since the summer. 

Meek's ongoing dispute with MMG's black sheep, Wale, predates the Drake beef by about a year, first arising when he accused Folarin of not promoting DWMTM (a petty gripe if there ever was one). More than a year after the first "#UNOTMMG" shot was fired, just about a month ago, he again called the DC rapper out, this time for "gossiping about they hoe ass feelings." Apart from seeming a bit childish, this squabble is counterproductive to Meek's career, as it creates conflict in the ranks of his label. At this point, Rick Ross is one of the few who hasn't given up on Meek, so sabotaging the Maybach empire doesn't seem like the smartest move. 

Meek and Wale are fundamentally different artists on the same relatively small label, which is often a very clear stimulus for beef, but Meek's gotta survey his career right now and ask himself it's really worth his while to go after a guy who he's basically not allowed to diss on record. Considering his aggressive social media presence, perhaps the better option is for Meek to get off Twitter entirely at this point, at least for a while. 

If DWMTM seemed a little lighter on bar-for-bar brilliance than Meek's other releases, that's because it had every right to be. For the first time, Meek was able to court top-tier features to share airtime with him, with impinged on his time and songwriting constraints, and he also went with beats that did a bit more of the heavy lifting (musically speaking) than his usual mixtape set of Jahlil Beats bangers. The record allowed him to zoom out a bit and focus on storylines, hooks, and chemistry, but his upcoming tape needs to remind us that he's still got those lyrical fireworks that made his name. In short, we need another "Dreams & Nightmares Intro" and not another "Church."

Ideally, Dreamchasers 4 would be lighter on the features and melodies and heavier on the battle-style rapping and bombastic beats. A huge reason that Meek became so popular was that he always sounded so ferociously hungry, like he had something to prove. Now, more than ever, he does.

Just after "Back To Back," rumors started flying around that Meek and Nicki had broken up, which months later has been proven to be entirely untrue. He's still got the most powerful, most frequently lusted-after woman in hip hop, the one who's always seemed to have Drake's heart, despite his best attempts to hide that. All Meek has to do when people call him a "failure" or "washed" is point to Ms. Minaj, and realize that he doesn't need to feel emasculated when bragging about how much money she earns. The dumbest line on "Back To Back" was "Is that your world tour or your girl's tour?" and Meek really missed an opportunity to say "Yes, it is her tour, and I'm the only man in the world who gets to be onstage and in the bed with the baddest bitch in the game... You mad?" Like, it's abundantly clear that Beyoncé is a hundred times more globally popular than Jay Z is, and he seems to relish that fact every chance he gets. Why can't Meek do the same? He and Nicki are in totally different lanes, and neither is in danger of stealing the other's thunder. Meek just needs to direct all the haters' attentions to the romantic scoreboard, where he's still the reigning MVP of the rap game.