Meek Mill’s legal drama has come to an end. What now?
Philly rapper presses forward by looking back at flaws in justice system Rapper Meek Mill says his legal saga gave him “a story to tell.”
Without any legal trouble to worry about, will Meek Mill still be Meek Mill?
A week ago, Mill pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a firearm and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office dropped all other charges against the Philadelphia rapper born Robert Rihmeek Williams on the gun and drugs charges stemming from an incident that kept the hip-hop star either in jail or on probation for 12 years.
That announcement comes in the wake of Pennsylvania Superior Court’s decision in July to vacate the conviction that has defined Mill’s existence since he was first arrested on South Hemberger St. in January 2007, when he was just beginning to make a name for himself as a promising battle rapper with a potentially bright future.
It means that the operative hashtag is no longer #FreeMeekMill. It’s #MeekMillIsFree.
And it also means that the 32year-old’s long journey through the criminal justice system that began when he was still a teenager and shadowed him throughout his rise as a streettough hip-hop star is finally over.
That ordeal is the subject of a newish five-part Amazon docuseries Free Meek that premiered earlier this month. The reality TV version of Mill’s saga brings the story up to a point when the rapper’s future was still uncertain. The show wrapped with Mill still under the supervision of Philadelphia Judge Genece Brinkley, who sent him to prison for two to four years in November 2017 for technical parole violations. (Brinkley was removed from the case last month.)
Last week’s decision doesn’t render Free Meek irrelevant. The show uses the Philadelphia rapper’s story to build a compelling case that the American criminal justice system can be a cruel, unjust and illogical place, in particular for people of colour. The decision lifts a tremendous burden off Mill, who speaks in Free Meek of the stress of fearing he could be sent back to jail at any time. “Locked in cages, got to walk around with shackles on your feet,” Mill recounted to the Inquirer last year. “It’s a nightmare.”
In the title cut to Dreams & Nightmares that became his signature song, Mill stated his incarceration bona fides while declaring his determination to succeed by dint of hard work, no matter what the obstacles were placed in his way.
“I used to pray for times like this, to rhyme like this / So I had to grind like that, to shine like this,” he rhymed.
But now that all of that is behind him, as is the constant pressure that threatened Mill’s freedom and gave his music urgency. So what does Meek Mill need to do now?
The answer is to move forward, while also looking back.
Mill would be wise to use his new-found freedom — and the platform #FreeMeekMill gave him — to continue speaking on the justice issues his case called attention to.
Mill now has an audience broader than he did before perceived injustice turned him into a symbol of a flawed criminal justice system. The drama he’s faced has presented him with an opportunity. “It gave me a story to tell,” the rapper says in Free Meek. Now that he has finally been granted his freedom, his next task is simple: Tell it.