Meek Mill: Championships Album Review
Meek Mill has dropped his fourth studio recording album Championships. Meek, who is known for his Dreamchasers mixtape series and label, is sticking to his principles of being gritty and giving street feel beats on this new album. But don’t get it twisted. He shows evolution in his lyrics and thinking throughout the album speaking on his jail sentence and the criminal injustices in America especially for young black men. He is becoming the voice for criminal injustice as he was sentenced to two to four years in jail for popping a wheelie because he had been on probation. With a recent wave of albums consisting of only 30 minutes and about 10 songs, Meek has kept it the same with a one hour and nine-minute duration and 19 songs in total.
He comes right out in this album and shouts out his hometown football team, the Philadelphia Eagles and speaks on all the things that he recollects about growing up in the streets of Philly, the rap side that fans want to hear and the pain he deals with. Of course, it’s hype just in typical Meek Mill intro fashion. North Philadelphia is full of people of color as well, and Meek makes that evident in a number of his songs with a Spanish artist and references throughout. It gives the album a hint of range in the album. The features and Meek fit perfectly with each other for the most part. With Meek often, times reiterating the struggle he was going through in jail and how he is trying to be a leader despite it all, features like Rick Ross, Jay Z and Fabulous matched him to a tee with their lyrics.
He made sure to speak to the younger generation in this album about being bigger than just a 24k chain. One of the most hyped and loved songs on the album is “What’s Free” featuring Jay Z and Rick Ross. This song is a point-blank representation of telling the younger crowd how they used to think versus how they think now. His lyrics “What’s free? Free is when nobody else can tell us what to be.” And “Made a few mistakes but this ain’t where I want to be.” speaks volumes to how far he’s come.
With features like Drake, Cardi B, Future, 21 Savage, Ella Mai and Melii, Meek gives a good mix of older and younger rapper features that fit them best. Like a good number of Meek Mill albums and songs, this album makes you think about how hard life can be, how much drive you need to make it out of struggles, women and it makes you want to turn up at the same time. For the first time, as good as the intro was, it still could’ve been better. He didn’t match the previous intros that he’s used to having.
Song placement is always key, and this album pretty much nailed it. There are a few songs that should’ve been put closer to another towards the beginning of the album. By the halfway point the flow of it starts to be perfect as each song started to form into each other but there were still times it felt as if there was a change in songs. Besides those few minor things, this album is definitely the best album he has put out.
Many refer to it as street conscious music that brings knowledge to the streets. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Meek views this album as “This album is gonna hit all my fans, whether you’re a day one Meek Mill fan or you just learned about my music through my legal situation,” Many fans expect meek to be on many features in the coming months.
Rating: 7/10
Jibril Washington is a senior majoring in broadcast journalism and minoring in theatre arts. To contact him, email at jibrilwashington@gmail.com.
