“Catch you out in Brooklyn, get your chain tookin’ My Philly boys’ll creep up on you when you ain’t lookin’” – Meek Mill, “War Pain”
“He who wishes to fight must first count the cost.” – Ts’ao Kung, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War
You’d think if Meek Mill learned anything from the lopsided war of words he waged last summer with Drake, it’s that ill-conceived public beefing is not a good look.
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Now comes a claim that the Philly rapper’s entourage took his anger out on Drake’s alleged ghostwriter Quentin Miller, who revealed in an interview posted Friday that Meek’s Dreamchasers crew came at him in a Nike store and sucker punched him over the conflict.
Miller is the Atlanta rapper and songwriter who found himself in the middle of the feud of the year when Meek called Drake out for using a ghostwriter on their track “R.I.C.O.” (and beyond). The accusation famously sparked the Great Rap Beef of 2015, which saw the two MCs trade diss tracks and harsh words over a span of months that felt like years.
According to Miller, it was when he publicly spoke up to deny the ghostwriter allegations and praise Drake that he inadvertently crossed Meek. And when Meek ran into Miller one day in Beverly Hills, Miller ended up with a bloodied face.
“It’s true,” he told Vlad TV when asked about the incident. “I shed blood in the Nike store on Wilshire.”
Miller remained v. chill as he recounted the harrowing details of that day. He’d arrived with a friend in an Uber to the Niketown store in swanky Beverly Hills on an unspecified date, where he crossed paths with Meek Mill, his entourage, and a gaggle of photographers.
First, he said, they “tried to get me in front of paparazzi.” When Miller declined, “they just followed me in the Nike store, and it popped off in the Nike store.”
One of Meek’s buddies came up to Miller inside of Niketown, he said, and demanded he record an apology to Meek in front of the cameras. He refused and got punched in the mouth before his assailant took off.
“I’m not a street nigga, you know, I’m a suburban kid,” he shrugged, poking fun at his attacker. “I’m not a violent person. I’m not out here to be the toughest nigga. Punching me is like punching Frank Ocean, or like punching iLoveMakonnen. What kind of points are you getting off of that?“
Miller added that he chose not to call the cops or file any official police reports over the assault.
“If that made them feel better, you know what I’m saying… more power to you,” he said. “I’m still out here. I’m still shopping at the Niketown on Wilshire. I’m still shopping at the Niketown at the Grove.”
“I didn’t ask to be a part of that shit. I’m the only one—I’m like, what the fuck you hittin’ me for?” he laughed. “I shed blood in Nike! I’m really prideful about that. I really get to say that.”
And to think: Until this week, pop culture had nearly forgotten about the dramatic feud that held us collectively rapt for nearly an entire summer. It began in earnest last July, when Drake responded to Meek’s out-of-the-blue ghostwriter claim by releasing heavy-hitting diss tracks “Charged Up” and “Back to Back,” adding insult to injury with a shade-tastic PowerPoint presentation filled with anti-Meek memes he played at his live shows.
Eventually, Nicki Minaj's boyfriend countered with “Wanna Know,” a song most notable for suggesting that Drake once got peed on in a movie theater. But their fight was drawing in outside parties, like fellow Philly rapper AR-Ab, who delivered his own #TeamDrake “Back 2 Back Freestyle” threatening much more colorful violent retribution to Meek. Even the WWE’s Undertaker got swept up in the melee, dropping a legal Last Ride on Meek for stealing his theme song. Meek was forced to take it offline, effectively bringing an end to the madness.
On August 12, 2015, Meek Mill officially announced on Instagram that he would beef with Drake no more.
He promptly deleted the comment.
It took until January, but Meek finally scored a real win with his Drake attack track “War Pain”—arguably his first surprise move, and only six months after he’d fired the first shot.
On that song, he next-level taunted Drake by not only answering Drake’s “Summer Sixteen” within hours of it dropping, but by also insinuating that he’d been given a jumpstart on it by “the ghostwriter”: Quentin Miller. For his part, Miller would not comment to VladTV on rumors that Meek was actually mad that day at Niketown because he’d refused to ghostwrite for him. “I’m not getting into detail about that,” he said. “That’s a wrap.”
Meek, meanwhile, seemed to deliver a direct response to Miller’s claim on Thursday in the universal language of meme:
Here’s hoping no further blood is shed in any Nike store, in any city, from this day forward—and that no more diss tracks see the light of day in this beef, for the love of the rap gods—in the name of Meek Mill and/or Drake.
