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Meek Mill Beats Drake, Kendrick Lamar For Top Rap Album At Billboard Music Awards

By Frank Yemi
Published on: 02:27 PST, May 23, 2016

The 2016 Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas had a few surprise winners, one of which was the Top Rap Album awarded to Meek Mill’s “Dreams Worth More Than Money,” besting Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Future, and Dr. Dre, who were also nominated for the category. According to the Billboard winner’s list, these were the albums nominated this year.

Top Rap Album:

  • Drake, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late
  • Drake & Future, What A Time To Be Alive
  • Dr. Dre, Compton
  • Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp A Butterfly
  • Meek Mill, Dreams Worth More Than Money – WINNER

One of the singles from Meek Mill’s award winning album is “R.I.C.O.” featuring Drake — it is the last known collaboration with the two artist before the infamous feud that led Meek Mill to criticize Drake on Twitter by accusing him of using ghostwriters for his song’s lyrics.

This led to the rappers writing diss songs aimed at each other, including Drake’s “Back to Back,” which ended up being a Billboard hit and earning a nomination for Best Rap Performance at the 58th Grammy Awards.

Some fans felt that the feud between the two rappers led to Meek Mill’s first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 charts, with “Dreams Worth More Than Money” going under-appreciated. The album received an average score of 74/100 by Metacritic, which indicated “generally favorable reviews.”

However, others felt that the Billboard Awards loses credibility by choosing Meek Mill over Kendrick Lamar and Drake due his lower record sales compared to the two other artist. Billboard claims to use a data-based system to decide winners rather than a peer-vote system, such as the Grammy’s.

“Billboard Music Awards finalists are based on key fan interactions with music, including album and digital songs sales, radio airplay, streaming, touring and social interactions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify and other popular online destinations for music. These measurements are tracked year-round by Billboard and its data partners, including Nielsen Music and Next Big Sound. The awards are based on the reporting period of tracking dates March 23, 2015 through March 17, 2016 and Billboard chart dates April 11, 2015 through April 2, 2016. Since 1940, the Billboard charts have been the go-to guide for ranking the popularity of songs and albums, and are the ultimate measure of a musician’s success.”

Meek Mill’s girlfriend and fellow Billboard award nominee Nicki Minaj took to Instagram to celebrate his win with a post that notes that ABC did not air any of the Hip Hop winners in their broadcast of the award show.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFvGhopL8bM/?taken-by=nickiminaj

One big winner in the Billboard awards was the Weekend who took home eight awards in several categories for his hit song “The Hills” and Top R&B album for “Beauty Behind the Madness.” Adele won “Top Billboard 200 Artist,” beating the likes of Justin Bieber, Drake and Taylor Swift.

Since releasing his album and feuding with Drake, Meek Mill has had some legal trouble. He violated his parole, according to Hot New Hip Hop, and was sentenced to three months of house arrest in February. His still managed to release a mixtape; however, he was eventually barred from recording new music.

Meek, who was ridiculed with memes on social media, has decided to focus on his music, but continues his feud with Drake. They frequently send direct and indirect lyrics taunting each other with new releases, such as Meek’s “War Pain” and Drake’s “Hype” on the album Views, which he indirectly responds to Meek and addresses the ghostwriting accusations.

What do you think of Meek Mill winning an award for Top Rap Album — does he deserve it? What was your favorite Hip Hop album? Sound off in the comments below.

[Photo by Marcus Ingram/Getty Images]

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