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Meek Mill is now co-owner of Lids: Behind the deal and how Jay-Z played a role

Meek Mill is officially the part owner of the hat retail giant, Lids, he announced in an exclusive with Business Insider today.

Maybe if this was a decade ago, we’d call it a surprisingly good move by a rapper, but it’s 2019 and this is very much on trend with how hip-hop artists have been moving.

I mean, look at Rihanna, who’s well on her way to being a billionaire, or Jay-Z, who actually is. In fact, according to Meek in the piece issued out today, it was from being around Jay that inspired that move. Meek said,

“I’ve seen Jay-Z, and then I’ve watched other artists who came up around his time. He actually built something. He built businesses, and he built things that made him become the man who he is, that we could call a billionaire guy. He built that, and I watched that, and I studied that. That’s why I’m working the way I’m working now to build a foundation for myself too,” he continued.

Meek caught wind of the deal through his close friend and business partner, Michael Rubin, who’s the co-owner of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, the executive chairman of the sports retailer Fanatics, and a co-founder of Mill’s Reform Alliance Foundation for criminal-justice reform.

Rubin’s is already apart of Lids’ ownership via his Fanatics company, so, in addition to already being an avid consumer of the product, he had an in to a seat at the table. Meek continued,

“I’ve been shopping at Lids my whole life, wearing hats, fitteds, of course, fitted hats and caps, all types of hats. In our culture, it’s been a big thing. So, it was something I ain’t have to think twice about and always believed in, that it’ll work.”

The move will make Meek, whose real name is Robert Williams, the company’s lead creative strategist and release a limited-edition line of hats through the brand in August.

https://twitter.com/MeekMill/status/1143915575334170624

Like Jay, like Rihanna and many other rappers who are constantly exercising their business acumen as well as rhyming capability, Meek is leveraging his influence and bossing up while he can.

“I’m trying to get ownership in a lot of things to where I can still live comfortable the way I was living in my prime years as a rapper. I’m just trying to build a foundation of some good businesses that’ll keep me living good,” the Philadelphia rapper says.

In addition to the expanding his business portfolio, the Championships artist has an Amazon series titled Free Meek premiering on Prime Video August 9, 2019. The docu-series is executively produced by Jay-Z and goes behind the story of Meek Mill’s 2017 arrest for probation violations.

To say Meek is bossing up is an understatement and it’s even better to see how hip-hop is helping each other grow.