11 Things We Learned From Meek Mill's ‘360 With Speedy Morman’ Interview

Meek Mill sat down with Complex News' Speedy Morman for an in-depth '360 With Speedy Morman' interview. These are the biggest takeaways from it.

In the wake of his new album Expensive Pain, Meek Mill stopped by Motorcycle Mall in Belleville, New Jersey for the latest 360 With Speedy Morman interview.

In the extensive conversation, Meek broke down a few stories from his career, detailed his plans for an Expensive Pain re-release, and indicated he knows when he’s going to stop focusing on music. The Philly rapper also addressed the negative reaction to the album’s cover art, and why he doesn’t pay too much attention to internet rumors about him.

Meek made his seventh appearance in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 with Expensive Pain, bringing in an impressive 95,000 equivalent album units in its first week. He’s set to celebrate the record with a special event at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 23. A number of guests are expected to appear at the event, including Lil Baby, Lil Durk, Lil Uzi Vert, Giggs, and Brent Faiyaz, among others.

Check out some of the highlights from Meek Mill’s 360 With Speedy Morman interview below.

Time stamp: 5:10

“My album was called Best Summer Ever, but the summer was kinda getting over with,” Meek explained. “I wanted to drop a certain date, they [the label] said there wasn’t enough time, we pushed it back towards October, so that title ain’t really make sense anyway.” 

When Meek got in the studio with Brent Faiyaz, who appears on “Halo,” they listened to “Blue Notes 2” with Lil Uzi Vert. Faiyaz pointed out one of the lines on the track. “N***a, this expensive pain, pullin’ an expensive Range,” Meek raps at the end of his verse.

“After the song played, he was like, ‘That name is crazy right there, just sound crazy, Expensive Pain.’ Turned it to the album title right there. … Shout-out to Brent Faiyaz,” Mill recounted. 

He also mentioned he was changing multiple parts of the album quite a bit before its release, and his producer Cardo suggested they make a record leaning more on the “fun” side of things at one point. “I did want a fun album this time,” Meek said.

Time stamp: 8:10 and 10:20

Meek is gearing up to release a deluxe edition of Expensive Pain in the near future, but he’s calling the extended version something different. “I’m changing the game, we ain’t calling it the deluxe,” he said. “I don’t what a deluxe is, we gonna call it extendo. We gonna make it longer, and we gonna basically update the playlist.”

He said he could boost it to “32 shots or something,” but clarified that he was making a reference to extended firearm magazines and clips. “Expensive Pain: Extendo Version, we doing like a whole new thing. People usually do deluxe, they do two, three records—this gonna be more.”

Asked about his long-teased Pop Smoke collaboration, tentatively titled “Blue Fashion,” Meek suggested it “might be” on the extended edition. “I’m trying to figure out who else from Brooklyn [to get] on there, cause [it’s] like two songs fading into one. I’m trying to figure the song all the way out, but mostly likely that’s going on the extendo pack.”

Time stamp: 8:55

Meek doesn’t want to make music as his primary job forever, telling Speedy he might quit his “day job” within the next four years.

“People don't really be fucking with me like that, so I'ma keep charging the doors every three, four months on some rapping shit, probably. I got like three, four years left," he said. Asked if that means he’s serious about retiring, he implied that he is, but won’t rule out making some music again.

"Really, I've been rapping since I was 23. I can't be performing forever, I probably got two, three more years,” he explained. “I think these years are the last I'm going hard with music. I'm going to pursue other stuff, I'll still make music. But going on tour, working on an album for six months, being away from my family that long, I give up. Let the young n***as come up next, and see who's like… Move me out the way." 

He clarified that rap just won’t be his “day job” anymore, and he’s still expecting to release “four, five more albums” before then.

Time stamp: 11:00

There’s been a small but vocal backlash against Meek’s latest album due to the cover art, a cubist-style rendering of the rapper surrounded by three naked Black women in sexually provocative poses. One is featured on a stripper pole, while another is bent over. Created by Black artist Nina Chanel Abney, the artwork created a stir on social media. As TMZ reported, one angry man referred to the art as “satanic” in a video rant after he saw a bus featuring Expensive Pain imagery.

“Nina the shit, I don’t think people really understand in the internet and the social world, no one really give a fuck about the fake social world shit,” he said. “She a Black artist, she a Black woman. She’s been expressing herself through art… Nina, she always has a real definition behind her art, she a great artist. These people don’t worry about our community when we dying and going to jail and trapped inside of poverty, so don’t speak on this when you feel some type of way [when] you see some shit you don’t like. Speak up when you see a little girl get killed in our neighbourhood like we do.”

Addressing the video of the shouting man’s public freakout, Meek suggested the man should have felt that rage when George Floyd was murdered by police, not when a bus featured provocative art. “I know he was outraged about a bus and a painting that was on, but what did he say when he saw a white man choke out a Black man for nine minutes?”

However, Meek suggested he doesn’t necessarily agree the art should be featured on a bus. 

Time stamp: 13:30

After touching upon the controversy, he shifted the conversation to his thoughts on so-called “cancel culture.”

“Everybody can have their opinion, but I’m not too fine on that social fake shit,” Meek said. “That fake canceling people shit? I support all Black people, ain’t no Black rapper, or brown rapper, or probably even white if you stand for what I stand for… I’m never canceling you if I feel you aren’t intentionally trying to hurt people, or cause drama.”

Mill thinks if someone makes “a mistake,” they should be given an opportunity to learn and better themselves. “Social media and platforms are real sensitive of things that don’t really matter in the world, in my neighborhood we got 600 murders, there’s poverty going on. Please help us, if you wanna help change the world.”

Time stamp: 15:30

“They say I sold 90,000, I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but if we walk outside right now you gonna hear that shit booming,” he said, clarifying that he does care about his chart performance but he’s ultimately not too involved with it either way. 

“I’d rather they take me off Billboard,” he said. “I think about, what is the purpose of me being on Billboard? If Jay-Z talking ‘bout he don’t believe Billboard, he been in the game for 30 years, why should I should put myself in a position… Billboard is not a part of my marketing scheme, it’s not a part of my talent, a part of my art… I’ve never really been a numbers person.”

He also briefly touched on the Grammys, saying he doesn’t want people who don’t understand his music to be critiquing it. “If the person doing the Grammys ain’t gonna analyze the right way, I don’t want you here,” he said. “I don’t want you rating my shit.”

Time stamp: 20:00

Meek still revisits his older music videos and freestyle clips from time to time, as he thinks it helps him feel that same “hunger” again.

“I was watching old videos of when I was 18, 19 just to get the feel of how I felt that day, and get like my hunger,” he said, noting he can tell exactly how little money he had in his pocket in some of those early videos. “I can remember from what I had on that day, like, ‘Damn, I was broke, you need to turn up to have that hunger you had right here.’ And that’s kinda what I was doing for Expensive Pain.”

Time Stamp25:50

In the past, there were plenty of rumors that Meek and his former label boss Rick Ross were at odds. Asked about the situation, Meek told Speedy he’s not interested in addressing internet rumors.

“When you type in my name you might see 90 things, I got seven babies, I got beef with Ross on the internet,” he laughed. “That shit is not my world… I try to remove it from my life because it ain’t real.”

He made it clear there’s no ill will between him and Ross. “I don’t even want that type of narrative on me and the people I made millions with and came up with.” He also briefly spoke about his Rick Ross and Jay-Z collaboration “What’s Free,” saying Hov was a last-minute addition.

Time stamp: 30:50

Mill was present for some of the recording of Lil Baby and Lil Durk’s joint album The Voice of the Heroes, as was the project’s executive producer James Harden. Asked what it was like hanging out with Harden in the studio, Meek said Harden wasn’t getting as much sleep before practice as he should have been.

“He had to go to practice at like 9 in the morning, and he had stayed up till like 6,” the rapper said. “Went to sleep for like an hour and went straight to practice. And then came back and took a nap after this full day.”

Time stamp: 31:30

Meek mentioned he was originally going to be on all of The Voice of the Heroes project with Lil Baby and Lil Durk, though he ultimately only showed up for his memorable appearance on “Still Runnin.”

“Yeah, I was supposed to, but my business… We didn’t really make it match up all [on] my side,” he said. “We all agreed it was just better for them to do it, because Baby and Durk around the same age bracket and they’re on fire at the same time. It definitely was a cook-up in the beginning, I still got 20 more songs with Baby and Durk. One of them might be on the extendo pack.”

Pressed about if he was only willing to share one out of the 20, he said he doesn’t want to “flood” his fans with those because Expensive Pain isn’t a collab project.

Time stamp: 36:00

As far as his other plans for the future, Meek said he’s looking to get more into the movie industry. He made his acting debut in 2020’s Charm City Kings, and is now looking to become a screenwriter.

“Doing my life movie is a big deal to me, too, I’ma start writing that tonight,” Mill said. “I’ve talked to a few directors, and I’m going to start writing it tonight and finish. I wrote a few times in prison, but I can’t find where I left them at. So tonight I’m gonna really take my time, and start.”

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