The Queens Street Life Revisited: Meyhem Lauren “7000 Thoughts”

Relative newcomer Meyhem Lauren's fierce Illmatic-like delivery and fixation on themes like contingency, ruination, and self-annihilation brings to mind the brief but memorable discography of fellow Queens rapper Ak Skills. While Meyhem's emotionally evocative, deceptively unrefined rhyme style is not easily mistaken for Ak's matter-of-fact late 90s delivery, both rappers borrow vocal and poetic techniques from the same source: the anxiously introspective exposition best exemplified by Nas's verse on "Life's A Bitch." On "7000 Thoughts," Meyhem channels Nasty Nas at his most poignant,  in a manner reminiscent of Ak's cautious explication of the pitfalls of street life on his lesser known songs "One Life To Live" and "One Thing Or Another," but also effectively evokes regret and pathos in a conversational tone that hearkens further back to one of Nas's principle influences, Tragedy Khadafi (formerly Intelligent Hoodlum).