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Music

The Four Tragicomic Stages of Meek Mill Falling Down The Steps

Anticipation, high octane action, laughs, and a truly magnificent payoff. Prime time television if ever I saw it.
Lauren O'Neill
London, GB

Is there anything more simultaneously hilarious and harrowing than watching someone just absolutely fucking stack it? Is there anything that reveals the duality of the human condition, that floods our twin capacities for lols and lamentations more? The answer, dear reader, is no. With this in mind, let me present to you this, a video of Meek Mill taking a self-confessed L and falling flat on his face:

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Yes, this video is funny. But what I want you to take from this video is this: it is a perfect tragicomedy. It has everything – anticipation, high-octane action, laughs and a truly magnificent payoff. Let's break it down, into the four perfect, tragicomic stages of Meek Mill tumbling down some stairs like a damn human Slinky.

1) The Anticipation: establishing the hero

Here in this video, Meek is a very #relatable guy. Here he is, just leaving his mom's house. How many times have you yourself also left your mom's house with careless abandon? You have so much in common with Meek already. You have also read his self-deprecating and self-aware caption. You feel for him before you've seen anything. Here, he's the hero we can all see ourselves in, and that makes his ensuing story so affecting

2) The High-Octane Action: catch Meek slippin'

But then he places his Yeezy-clad foot on that fourth step and it is game over. Tell me you did not gasp a sharp intake of breath the moment you saw him slip to the side as if he were giving an impassioned performance of the popular party dance known as the "Cha Cha Slide". This is movie-quality action, and Meek is giving it to you for free (Side note: why did nobody tell Meek that Yeezys are not snow appropriate footwear?)

3) The Laughs: man goes head first into a bush

Not much funnier than a famous rapper falling on his arse, and then on his face, is there? The suspense established earlier gives way to the sort of puerile laughs you can literally only do when someone falls over or accidentally farts, and that's why this is a perfect tragicomedy. Bravo!

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4) The Payoff: the pile of snow on the head

Some might say that it is payoff enough that Meek falls over, but you would be mistaken in thinking that this is the funniest part of the video. No, the funniest bit of this video is right at the end, when a shit ton of snow falls on his head after he has already face-planted to high heaven. It is the equivalent of kicking Meek while he is down, because it elicits the best human feeling of all – schadenfreude. This the true L of which he speaks in his caption, and it is amazing.

And it ends as quickly as it began, with Meek, once more, representing us all. He half-sprints out of the frame, into the distance, presumably in an attempt to outrun the concept of embarrassment itself. We have all been there; and we thank Meek for sharing his pain so that others might laugh. Turns out Meek Mill was the tragicomic hero 2017 didn't even know it needed.

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(Image via Meek Mill on Instagram)