Meek Mill is finally talking about the bunny hops. And what he is saying should make us think harder about how we consume Black men on the internet.
In a series of posts on X this week, the Philadelphia rapper addressed the viral 2021 clip that showed him doing bunny hops across a tennis court after losing a bet to billionaire businessman Michael Rubin. The footage has been weaponized against Meek for years, framed as a degrading moment where a rich white man made a rapper humiliate himself for entertainment.
Meek says that framing is a lie.
What Actually Happened
According to Meek, the bunny hop game originated during his time in prison. “This is a game I started from prison we used to make killers do bunny hops when they lost because it was too hostile for money,” he wrote on X (via his account). The intention was always to defuse tension through competition without violence.
When Meek lost the tennis match to Rubin, the bunny hops were the agreed-upon stakes. A friendly bet between two people who consider each other friends. “They clipped me doing bunny hops and acted as if a billionaire made me do something against my moral codes from a lost bet,” Meek explained, according to Hip-Hop Wired.
The plan, Meek noted, was actually to make the billionaire do the bunny hops. He just lost the match.
The Bigger Problem Meek Is Pointing At
This is where the story gets political. Meek described what is happening to him (and other artists) as “political lynching” within hip-hop culture. He argues that moments like the bunny hop clip are deliberately stripped of context and weaponized to diminish a Black artist’s credibility, influence, and standing in the community, according to The Jasmine Brand.
That framing deserves serious consideration. We live in an era where a five-second clip with no context can redefine a person’s public identity. The algorithm does not care about nuance. It rewards ridicule. And when the target is a Black man, the ridicule carries historical weight that most people scrolling on their phone are not stopping to consider.
Meek also connected his frustration to a broader pattern, explaining his years-long hiatus from interviews as a refusal to participate in a media ecosystem that profits from misrepresentation.
Why This Matters
The bunny hop video is a case study in digital-age narrative manipulation. A clip removed from context becomes a meme. The meme becomes a reputation. The reputation becomes a weapon. And the person at the center of it never gets the benefit of the doubt.
This is not just about Meek Mill. It is about how Black public figures are consumed, ridiculed, and discarded by the same internet that claims to celebrate them. It is about who gets to control their own story and who has their story stolen by a 15-second clip.
Meek is not asking for sympathy. He is asking a real question: when did hip-hop culture start letting the internet decide who deserves respect?
