Meek Mill & Drake: the
beef isn’t even a contest
Meek is just another
competitor, yelling
and screaming
By SHAYAN SHAFII
For The Daily
“I Heard once, that they would
rather hear about memories than
enemies / Rather hear what was or
what will be than what is / Rather
hear how you got it over how much
it cost you / Rather hear about find-
ing yourself and how you lost you /
Rather you make this an open letter
about family and struggle and it tak-
ing forever / About hearts that you
broken and ties that you severed /
No doubt in my mind, that’ll make
‘em feel better”
At the end of “Headlines,” the
standout single from Drake’s 2011
album Take Care, Drake recited
what in hindsight seems like a state-
ment of purpose for his career. A for-
mula for what he believes the people
need, what they crave, what they’ve
been (were) missing. In a rap game
that’s been cluttered by artists with
fantastical delusions of being drug
kingpins (yes you, Rick Ross), Drake
had the conviction to believe in
transparency as the ultimate vehicle
for expression. Four years removed
from his speculative claims, it’s safe
to say he got it right. He knows it
too; there’s a reason he recently spat
“Please do not speak to me like I’m
that Drake from four years ago / I’m
at a higher place.”
Thus, it comes as a surprise that
Drake’s authenticity has come into
question this week. Meek Mill
currently holds the number one
rap album in the country, but only
with the help of the Drake Stimu-
lus Package™. The Boy’s feature
on “R.I.C.O.” undoubtedly raised
the profile of the album, but Meek
has opted to bite the hand that
fed him by claiming Drake didn’t
write the verses for several of his
recent hits, including the feature
he paid for.
To say that Meek’s shots are
poorly aimed would be an under-
statement. Drake responded like a
seasoned veteran: two songs and
zero tweets. For someone being
attacked on the basis of being a fraud,
he had no qualms stepping into the
ring while referring to himself as a
“singin’ nigga” on “Back to Back.”
Where Drake has shattered miscon-
ceptions of what it means to be a rap-
per, Meek Mill’s entire discography
could be described as simply “loud”.
The irony of the whole exchange
is that Drake is being accused of
singing another man’s words, but
it’s actually his shameless transpar-
ency that has led him to become
the biggest contemporary artist in
American popular culture. Surely
a debatable title to bestow upon
Drizzy Drake: a guy who once reen-
acted and recorded a drunk phone
call to his ex, denouncing her then
current partner … and put it on his
album. Yet, the audacity to say what
so many are unwilling to is what
makes him America’s guilty plea-
sure. So many call him soft, but how
many would stare down the bar-
rel of the media in the way Drake
approaches his music?
That Drake won the beef before
it even happened was written all
over If You’re Reading This It’s
Too Late. The whole project was
characterized by an incessant
paranoia that can come only from
being at the top: experiencing life
as a living target (“Energy”), hav-
ing difficulty letting new people in
(“Legend”), and even the strain on
his relationship with his mother
(“You and The 6”). Every one of
Drake’s moves is scrutinized with
the utmost attention to detail, but
no one really cares enough to fact-
check the number of bricks Meek
Mill claims to move.
Drake reached this position
through brutal honesty at his own
expense, and the consistency of
his message throughout his vari-
ous phases of life renders Meek
the loser by default. Faced with
defending his authenticity, Drake’s
trump card is that his music is
inherently an extension of himself.
He refers to the various women
in his life by first name on record,
recalls Toronto streets and neigh-
borhoods that he holds dear, and is
often the guy that “says it” so you
can take comfort in not having to.
On the other hand, Meek Mill’s
album could have very easily been
made by plenty of artists, and it
would have made an equal amount
of sense coming out of their mouths
(the entire MMG roster is virtu-
ally interchangeable at this point).
Meek can yell and scream all he
wants, as many have done before
him, but he’s just another com-
petitor trying to drain the reigning
champ of his energy.
‘M:I’ now a well-
oiled franchise
6
Thursday, August 6, 2015
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS
DRAKE
Free Meek Mill
By ALEX INTNER
Daily Arts Writer
For the past three “Mission:
Impossible” movie releases, there
have been an assortment of head-
lines that proclaim something like
“New
entry
reinvigorates
‘Mission: Impos-
sible’ Franchise.”
However,
after
the
unqualified
creative and box
office success of
“M:I Ghost Pro-
tocol,” the series’s
new entry, “M:I
Rogue
Nation”
seems less like a
rejuvenation
of
a dormant fran-
chise, and more
like a showcase for the series’s grow-
ing confidence in its abilities at telling
enjoyable, globe-spanning espionage
adventure stories, with enough
twists to make up for some of the
drier scenes.
“Rogue Nation” follows what hap-
pens when, after the IMF (the fic-
tional Impossible Missions Force) is
shut down by the government, forc-
ing Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, coming
off the great “Edge of Tomorrow”) to
go underground while attempting
to take down the mysterious group
“the syndicate.” Along the way, he
seeks help from former-IMF friends
William Brandt (Jeremy Renner,
“Avengers: Age of Ultron”), Benji
(Simon Pegg, “The World’s End”)
and Luther (Ving Rhames, “Monday
Mornings”) and possible-syndicate-
double-agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca
Ferguson, “The White Queen”).
At its core, “Rogue Nation” is a spy
movie, and it has all the major pieces
you would expect. It includes gad-
gets, secret
messages, double crosses and lots
of covert activity, all of which are
executed at about the highest pos-
sible level. The story is filled with
enough enjoyable twists and intrigu-
ing mysteries to keep pushing the
story forward, even when a couple
over-long dialogue sequences threat-
en to hold it back.
Even with the strong plot, “Rogue
Nation” ’s major successes lie in its
major action set pieces, which help in
keeping the movie moving at a brisk
pace. The most well-known of these
sequences featuring Hunt hanging
off the side of an airplane does lose
some of the shock factor because of
its presence in pretty much every
trailer for the movie. However, the
other major set-pieces are both sur-
prising in the amount of fun they
have, but also how they use the
movie’s exotic locations. The movie
was shot on location in places such as
Austria, Morocco and London, each
of which has a corresponding action
sequence. There’s a scene set in the
Vienna Opera House which has mul-
tiple fights in and around the rafters
of the stage which are about as good
as anything you’ll see at the mov-
ies this year. Director Christopher
McQuarrie (“Jack Reacher”) frames
them in a tight, claustrophobic way
that creates a small feel in the Opera
House’s huge setting.
It helps that each of the movie’s
performers are working at the top of
their game. A lot of the comic relief
in this movie is put on the shoulders
of Pegg, who has proven himself in
the past as a gifted comic actor. He
routinely gets laughs, especially
when he’s shown in his role after
the shutdown of the IMF. Ferguson
has a complicated role to play, with
a character who peels back multiple
layers as the movie moves on, and
she does a good job bringing them
to life.
However, despite the strength of
the ensemble, this is Cruise’s movie,
and it’s as strong as it is because of
his work.
Despite being 53 years old, he can
still do the stunt work required of
a above-the-title star (like hanging
off the side of an airplane), and he
has the charisma to play a central
character in a movie like this. While
his movies haven’t been as success-
ful recently as the past (“Edge of
Tomorrow” only made $370 million
off a $178 million budget), “Rogue
Nation” shows that he still has the
same movie-star qualities that made
him famous.
What all the pieces of “Mission:
Impossible — Rogue Nation” add
up to is a film which knows exactly
how to tell an entertaining espio-
nage story. At this point, the “M:I”
franchise is starting to become a
well-oiled machine, and as long as
they produce movies with this tight
storytelling and high-quality action
work, and keep the ensemble togeth-
er, they should make several more.
MOVIE REVIEW
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
A-
Mission:
Impossible
— Rogue
NationS
Paramount
Pictures
Rave 20 &
Quality 16