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Meek Mill and Drake squared off in their highly-publicized battle in 2015.
Meek Mill took time to reflect on his label issues after his 2015 battle with Drake.
On Thursday (Jan. 16), battle rapper Arsonal asked Meek about his opinion on his former adversary suing Universal Music Group for promoting Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us”, citing defamation.
The Philadelphia emcee responded with a story, explaining what happened after Drizzy bested him in their bout, insisting that the label told him not to release new music. The “Going Bad” rapper also noted that the beef between himself and Drake was manufactured for the internet by their labels, Universal Music Group and Atlantic Records.
“Label told me don’t drop nothing…I went against that and dropped DC4 mixxtape,” he typed in response. “Shari Bryant backed me herself. 90k first week to heat up…I couldn’t make any playlist either that had me confused a lil. Losing confidence but I knew 80% was campaign! Influence for the net only.”
As he continued, Meek implied that, at the end of the day, the music industry is a popularity contest and a matter of “who knows who.” He asserted that he has since changed his game-plan, and it has paid off, placing him in rooms with people who call the shots.
“It all comes down to who know who…once I started owning companies,” he added. “I wanted to be in convo with the high level shakers and owners if I made more than 100m on a label because not the only business I got and I deal with the top people at companies to get top results!”
Meek Mill previously spoke on the Drake-Kendrick Lamar feud in a bizarre X/Twitter rant in May 2024. During this stream of consciousness, the Expensive Pain artist detailed his “honest” opinion on the situation and simply called both artists “great.”
“I give y’all my honest without speaking on Drake,” Meek typed. “Bike life culture ‘Meek’ billionaire culture connected to rap … really been through poverty the system ‘Meek’ really changing laws ‘Meek’ showed the most new artist love with my platform ‘Meek.’”
“My PR has been off for a year or 2 so they mutating my name but when I’m gone they will give it up!” he said. “Ima just keep grinding! [The] boy and Kendrick have their own lanes and qualities they great at also,” he later expressed in a rather confusing way.
As previously reported, UMG fired back at Drake on Wednesday (Jan. 15) after the rapper moved to officially sue his record label. Universal called his suit “illogical” and believe that Drake is “weaponizing the legal process.”
“Not only are these claims untrue, but the notion that we would seek to harm the reputation of any artist—let alone Drake—is illogical,” UMG stated. “We have invested massively in his music and our employees around the world have worked tirelessly for many years to help him achieve historic commercial and personal financial success.”
UMG then brought up Drake’s past beef with Pusha T and Meek as examples of him doing the same thing he is accusing Kendrick of: peddling exaggerated claims to win a rap battle.
“Throughout his career, Drake has intentionally and successfully used UMG to distribute his music and poetry to engage in conventionally outrageous back-and-forth’ rap battles’ to express his feelings about other artists,” UMG added. “He now seeks to weaponize the legal process to silence an artist’s creative expression and to seek damages from UMG for distributing that artist’s music.”
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