Meek Mill parlays his dramatic upheavals into infectious hip-hop anthems

MILL. Performs with girlfriend Nicki Minaj and other stellar guests in his first No. 1 album

MEEK MILL parlays the dramatic legal woes and romantic upheavals in his life into compelling and hook-heavy hip-hop anthems: In his second studio album, “Dreams Worth More Than Money,” which bows at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this week, the 28-year-old Philadelphia rapper sings, spits and screams his defiant lyrics with unbridled honesty and mad urgency!

With stellar guests in tow, Mill discusses the trappings of fame (the base-heavy “Jump Out The Face,” with Future), sex (“Been That,” featuring Rick Ross), disloyalty (“Cold-Hearted”) and romantic attraction, especially in the radio-ready single, “All Eyes On You,” which benefits from the complementary styles of smooth R&B vocalist, Chris Brown, and the rap counterpointing of Meek and his girlfriend, Nicki Minaj.

Minaj is subtler than usual (and refreshingly more subservient) in the sleek and sassy “Bad For You,” in which she says that she’s “a good girl who wants to be bad for” Mill, because—“good girls ain’t no fun!”

The rap artist dedicates “R.I.C.O.” (featuring Drake) to the people who didn’t believe in him when he was just starting out: “Today, I woke up with my dream girl, who’s as rich as a Beatle/ For my teachers who said I wouldn’t make it here: I spend in a day what you make in a year!”

True, the album chronicles Mill’s unexpected success—but, he says that there’s more to fame than fortune—and, as he discloses in “The Trillest,” his success didn’t come easy: “I got blood in my money, ether in my soul/ When curtains on the windows (are up), I’m just peekin’ at my ghost.”

“Lord Knows” (featuring Tory Lanez) is musically and structurally unique, because it incorporates a sampling of Mozart’s “Requiem Lacrimosa,” performed by the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, into Meek’s scathing diatribe, as he twits the judge who ordered him to take etiquette classes and the District Attorney who sent him to prison for violating his probation (he was convicted of drug-dealing and gun possession in 2008).

With the Slovac choir vocalizing in the background, Mill screams: “They tell me to be humble, I’m cocky as hell/ I just came from jail, ain’t do no cryin’/ They put me through hell, and I roared with the lions/ Shout out that judge who denied my bail!”