Cant Stop Wont Stop

“I wrote a check to myself \[in 2018\] when I was in jail,” Meekz tells Apple Music. “I read *The Law of Attraction* \[2006 self-help book by Esther and Jerry Hicks\] and I manifested it. I’m not even joking, the check was for £100,000, and I even put down the record label—I went deep.” For the Manchester rapper, his life and extraordinary emergence since incarceration confirm why he felt the power of the universe firmly behind him. Keeping his identity largely secret, the masked MC spent large parts of 2020 hijacking the UK’s buzzing rap landscape with a stream of gravel-toned anthemic drops. Debut EP *Can’t Stop Won’t Stop* is a gritty collection of solo tracks capturing a major first step in the grand vision, and a heartfelt tribute to close friends (fellow artists Dale Deezy and Tekka)—something that informs much of his music. “They were the guys that were supposed to make it way before me,” he says. “Those situations—losing them—almost made me lose confidence in myself to a point I nearly didn’t think this dream was possible. Now I let everyone know that it really is. I’m going to motivate the youth of Manchester and keep pushing on to let them know there is a path for them. It’s time to start elevating now.” Here, Meekz takes us inside his EP, track by track. **Manifesto** “The people on the intro are all people that have been supportive of me from the beginning. Coming into this game, these are the guys that I wanted to fuck with, and somehow, they’re the people that I’ve ended up fucking with. It’s mad! Charlie Sloth has been getting at me to get on Fire in the Booth since I dropped my ‘Hoods Hottest’ \[Freestyle\], but not right now. I want to get the whole country waiting first. We’re going to do it when the time’s right and everything will go crazy, trust me.” **Can’t Stop Won’t Stop** “\'Because ‘Can’t Stop Won’t Stop’ was also Tekka’s lyric, this tune means so much to me. I can’t even explain how long I was working on this one. I feel like it’s the hardest tune in the UK at the moment. I speak to some of the rappers that are popping and releasing right now, and I’ve told them that too. I knew something special was coming when I made this beat with Miko last year, and I guess everything sunk in for me a few months ago when I had to move house. Things were getting crazy where I live in Manchester, and I couldn’t be staying on the block with kids knocking on my door trying to take a picture.” **Like Me** “I wanted to send out a message to a lot of people here. I was on YouTube a while ago and I saw all these Meekz-type beats on there, with my sound. I was a bit overwhelmed I saw one on there with nearly a million views. To me that must mean that I’m setting the standard right now, and I wanna keep stepping up the levels.” **Big Bag** “I recorded this last year at the same time I finished ‘Rap Bands.’ I was just messing around in the studio at first, to be honest, but everyone told me to record it. I play around in the studio and see whatever comes up quite often, but music comes natural to me. It’s a big regret that I didn’t start earlier. I just didn’t know this was possible when I was a kid, and I didn’t see any other way. My olders didn’t know this was possible, and nobody in my family saw it. My grandad used to play his guitar around me all the time when I was three years old, so that put the music in my veins. I’m about to move on from these types of topics, so I want to give the fans something hard to hold them down now.” **God’s Clever** “This track’s about very real situations: When I say, ‘Mumzy used to beat me up/Never showed my teacher love/Pops locked inside, it used to eat me up,’ I would argue with my mum and she’d hit me, or kick me out of the house, and I’m supposed to be going off to school? Do you really think I can obey what a teacher’s telling me? There was just too much going on. Around that time I thought my dad was gone forever. He got a life sentence and I really thought life meant *life*. I have my own relationship with God, the higher power, the spirit, whatever you wanna call it. I just hope I go to heaven and see Tekka and Deezy, they’ll be proud to know that I did it.” **6 Figures** “When this dropped \[Christmas Day 2019\], it was a moment. I wanted to do something that’s never been done before for the video, too. It had to be big to match the song. We filmed it at a famous bar in Manchester where Winston Churchill gave a famous speech \[Reform Club\]. I really wanted to involve my family, and my granny especially, because she won’t be here forever. My family take me seriously now that they’ve seen the levels. I had 20 people running about on site after me that day, and I wanted them to see that and feel like they’re a part of it, because they are. I also wanted to show the youths in Manny that there’s more to the visuals than getting 20 guys on the side of the road with penknives in their bags and a few rental cars.” **Rap Bands** “I try and tell people to be smart with their cash, but truthfully I’ve always been a big spender myself. I would end up going to school with racks in my blazer, so I think I’ve always been used to money, that’s what it is. It’s all part of the plan to drop here with no features and say what I want to say. Keep your eyes peeled, though—there might be a B-side to this A-side.”