[Audio] Meeko - "Homeward Bound"

Thirteen seconds into the first verse on “Homeward Bound” it is already apparent that Brampton Ontario’s Meeko is anything but a talk-off-the-cuff rapper. Not that throw-away tracks (I’m looking at you Lil Wayne) don’t offer a unique and entertaining listening experience (they are instantly gratifying and kinda convenient like disposable diapers), but they aren’t typically substantive and tend to be, frankly, pretty surficial.

Alternatively, you can turn to artist emcees like Meeko. Meeko grew up in and on the golden era of hip hop and writes well crafted and intricate rhymes; rhymes with not a single word too many nor a single word too less: “ya’ll niggas blow smoke on the mike/I breathe life like oxygen/mask this fast like time for church offerin’/I’m in the spot again/guilty n’ innocent/whatever man I summon the powers of Johnnie Cochran.” In just one stanza, we already know Meeko the emcee is about the trials and tribulations of life rather than weed and cheese (not that the two are unrelated!); we already know Meeko plays a fine game of word play (the flip on “mask”), and we already know to expect from him relevant, effective and figurative allusions (Cochran indexes Combs, O.J., black criminal defense and social history). If you can catch all that in one listen, you, dear reader, are a lyrical and cultural hip hop connoisseur.

As the first single from The Detour Promo Fix (a dope taster tape for the forthcoming landmark album The Detour), “Homeward Bound” blazons Meeko’s return to the game (“I’m back!”), particularly for those who haven’t heard of him before. Meeko’s coming home. We don’t know where he went, or why he went there, but I have a feeling we’ll find out more about The Detour when his album drops in the near future.

Till then, “Homeward Bound” can be downloaded either as a single below, or as part of Meeko’s three-track The Detour Promo Fix, available through t4t.