CAM MEEKINS
:) :\ :(
You have to feel for Cam Meekins. In the aftermath of the “frat rap” explosion led by hometown boy Sam Adams’s arrival two years ago, every young, white, suburban-bred Massachusetts MC — 19-year-old Wellesley native Meekins included — was typecast as yet another wannabe, eager to exploit their supposed built-in cachet with horny, hard-partying teens looking for a soundtrack to debauchery. And while not totally ditching his responsibilities as a youthful instigator, on Meekins’s new album, he takes great pleasure in proving his skeptics wrong. “I’m not Mac Miller and I’m not Asher Roth” he reminds us on “Two Roads,” as if the Thelonious Monk piano sample and quoting from Robert Frost’s “Road Not Taken” didn't indicate that already. Indeed, the nuanced storytelling on “Run Away” and easy self-deprecation on “I Give a [expletive]” (“I ain't perfect, I got insecurities, I’m just a thinker and that lonely guy you see on the T”) feels like he’s skipped ahead to where Roth and his peers hope to progress one day. And sure, he does now and then indulge in some requisite electro-bounce, but the kid’s already shown he can grow up when he wants.
ESSENTIAL “Two Roads”
Available for download at www.cammeekins.com.