In the latest video from his triumphant 2018 comeback album Championships, Meek Mill uses the tale of a robbery gone wrong to highlight how many of those caught up in the system are just the products of their environments.
The video, directed by Will Ngo, shows two parallel narratives relating to the same tragic event. In one, set in 2006, a little boy makes the titular stovetop dish as his parents argue in the background, with a strong insinuation that his father is violent towards his mom off-camera. Later, the dad is involved in a robbery/shooting and dimed out by one of his partners to the police.
In 2017, the little boy is a grown man watching his own little boy cook noodles on the stove while contemplating the same criminal activities that sent his old man prison. The video closes with the haunting image of the first father symbolically passing his prison jumpsuit to his son, evoking the seemingly inescapable cycle of poverty, violence, and imprisonment that traps so many young Black men before they’re even old enough to be aware of it.
Meek is doing what he can to change that, though. In April of this year, he helped introduce a criminal justice reform bill in his home state, while he and Jay-Z’s Reform Alliance works to disrupt the cycle of imprisonment by ending the practice of unfair probation and cash bail policies.
Meek Mill is a Warner Music artist. .
