Meek Mill picking a feud with Drake is 'brilliant marketing'

Music feuding might sound like dirty business, but it's business nonetheless

Meek Mill's second album 'Dreams Worth More Than Money' sold 246,000 total copies in a week when it was released on June 29 (Getty)

Music feuding might sound like dirty business, but it's business nonetheless.

US rapper Meek Mill has been praised this week, not for his new album 'Dreams Worth More Than Money’, but for picking a fight with Drake following its release.

Using the same platform Meek picked to launch his attack, a former senior advisor to Barack Obama called the feud 'brilliant marketing'.

"I am ambivalent on Meek Mill as a rapper, but baiting Drake into a week long feud just as his album dropped is brilliant marketing," Pfeiffer wrote.

He might not be a big Mill fan, but as a political strategist to Obana, Pfeiffer is attuned to effective communication.

'Dreams Worth More Than Money' sold 246,000 total copies in a week when it was released on June 29 and became Meek Mill's first number one single in the US. This beat his 2012 debut 'Dreams and Nightmares', which sold 165,000 in its first week and went in at number two.

By its second week it had sold 307,401, enough to keep Mill at number one. The following week it lost the top spot to Tyrese and by its fourth week of release it shifted 39,139 copies. Meek Mill's chart position slid to number six.

That's about the same time Mill first got upset with Drake for refusing to share a link to the album on Twitter.

Then with 'Back to Back (freestyle)', which quickly racked up millions of plays.

"Is that a world tour or your girl's tour," he asks on the track, referring to Mill's support slot on his girlfriend Nicki Minaj's tour. "I know you gotta be a thug for her/ This ain't what she meant when she told you to open up more/ Yeah, trigger fingers turn to Twitter fingers/ You getting bodied by a singing n****."

Meek Mill and Drake have previously worked together, not least on Mill's breakout hit 'Amen' in 2012, so there's no history of beef here. It's more likely to be a well timed public spat to raise headlines just as Mill's album sales start to slow, and ahead of Drake's own festival, OVO, in Toronto on Aug 1.