Will Schube is Facetiming with the plug, but his phone’s at 3 percent.
Maxo Kream has a lot of requests. Well, he has one request, but it involves getting many, many people out of prison. As he says on “Meet Again,” “I got homies in the grave / I got homies in the pen / I got some that coming home / I got some that’s going in.” Very few rappers are able to create a portrait of empathy like Maxo does. His raps plead for understanding, for circumstance and second chances. “Try to go to visitation but they wouldn’t let me in / So our only conversation’s writing letters with a pen / Wanna see just how you doin’ wanna see just how you been,” he raps in the first verse. Here, as he does on his best tracks (see: “Roaches,” “Grannies”), the young Houston rapper paints a portrait that wavers between despair and hope, without ever wallowing in how unfair it can all be. He tells friends on the inside about keeping their families straight and friends surviving and dying from violence. He’s the messenger, but he’s also carrying the burden of a community on his shoulders.
The track was released at the beginning of this year, when most people were still catching up on 2018 year-end lists and easing back into the relentless onslaught of being a music consumer in the streaming era. As a result, “Meet Again” was overlooked upon an early Q1 release like his excellent 2018 Punken was. The just released visual adds energy to the already stellar track, and Maxo’s ability to put faces onto stories of hood life and Houston characters makes him one of the most personable and relatable emcees out right now.
With production from the legendary Mike Dean and Teej, the track bumps and bounces with the H-Town low-end, dusty but not ancient, somber chords praying with Maxo’s psalms. He raps about young daughters learning to walk and court appointed lawyers fucking up sentences. Despite the crushing regularity of friends leaving and coming home, dying and surviving, Maxo is certain he’ll see them all again. Either here or in the next life. It’s a positivity worth admiring and living up to. He’s seen it all, and no one tells a story quite like Maxo Kream.
