Meek Mill came to prominence as a battle rapper, which makes sense: His brash, propulsive flow sounds aggressive by necessity. But that’s hardly the entire story. The Philadelphia-born MC may have taken cues from fellow Philly street rappers like Beanie Sigel and the State Property collective, but Mill would retool his city’s reputation as a home of the underdog strivers into a place where fortune will always favor the bold. His earliest move to that end was signing with Rick Ross’ Maybach Music Group, a partnership that yielded some of the more braggadocios street raps of either’s catalog, songs like “Ima Boss,” “Tupac Back,” and “SHAQ & KOBE.” Mill doesn’t have to channel the heroes of his adolescence, however, just to get his point across. He carves a path all his own through high-energy anthems like “Levels,” “Litty,” and the statement record of all statement records, “Dreams and Nightmares.” A friendship-turned-rivalry-turned-friendship-again with Drake gave us bottle-service classics like “Amen,” “Going Bad,” and “R.I.C.O.,” but Mill is a lover as well as a party animal, as can be heard on tracks like “Dangerous” and “24/7.”