The good news is that those are the exceptions, and the frontloaded first half of the mixtape lays out the blueprint for what a great Meek Mill major-label debut album would look like.
"Take U Home" and "Face Down", both of which sport a Wale verse to go along with help from Big Sean for the former and Trey Songz for the latter, roll off the assembly line and into the trash heap. He doesn't so much step out of his own world as merge it with the one that he's about to enter, and the result is a mixtape that will continue his forward momentum even if it doesn't fulfill the wild expectations of some fans. The connection to the latter group doesn't go far beyond occupying the same tax bracket, but the strength of D2 is that in collaborating with those artists (and guys like Wale) Meek is still able to tip the scales in his favor. Gone are the first volume's guests like Beanie Sigel and Young Chris, stylistically similar rappers from Meek's hometown of Philadelphia that have instead been traded for the likes of Drake, Trey Songz, and Big Sean. Meek is a street rapper who's beginning to answer to executives, and the new Dreamchasers 2 is his first mixtape that reflects that. With expectations comes pressure, and pressure in rap means to repeatedly prove one's commercial potential in a genre largely starved for continuous hits. Meek Mill had a few big singles and a breakthrough mixtape in last year's Dreamchasers, but now comes the hard part.
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