Podcasters Rory and Mal recently discussed the impact of YouTube Music's new monthly audience metric on Drake, Meek Mill, and other artists. Rory and Mal cover most of the news and developments concerning the music domain.For the unversed, YouTube Music's monthly audience metric is a system tracking the total number of unique listeners who have listened to an artist on the platform in the last 28 days. Reacting to the same as seen in a clip posted by a joebuddenclips/fanpage on July 31, 2025, Jamil "Mal" Clay questioned:"Meek Mill has more monthly listeners than Drake?"Mal's comment was a response to Rory Farrell sharing that YouTube Music's new metric system showed that Meek Mill "was really up there" with 237 million, putting the rapper up by six places. However, Rory added that he had been confused with the metric since he hadn't seen YouTube co-sign it yet.Additionally, Mal expressed surprise over Meek Mill having more monthly listeners than artists like Travis Scott, Nicki Minaj, Future, Tyler The Creator, asking Rory to "cut this s*it." Dubbing it "bulls*it," Mal said that he wasn't rolling with YouTube Music's monthly audience metric because he couldn't believe that Meek Mill would have more listeners than other artists."You think Future's gon' out-rap Meek?": When Rory and Mal got into a debate over Future vs Meek MillThe recent instance of Rory and Mal discussing Meek Mill topping YouTube Music's audience metrics was not the first time the podcasters addressed the rapper and his career.In an episode of the New Rory & Mal podcast dated August 2024, Rory put forth his perspective about Meek not being a part of the conversation concerning the big three in the early 2010s, dubbing it "little offensive." Big three is a term used to describe the topmost entities in a domain, particularly hip-hop. The term was made popular by Drake's 2023 song featuring J. Cole called First Person Shooter. "At that time in the early 2010s- I think it was up for debate between Drake, Cole, Kendrick, obviously... But you guys don't think at that time, 2010–2011, that Meek wouldn't be in that conversation of who the next guys would be? And let's even say the next three," Rory said.He continued:"At that point on Twitter, people thought Cole—I mean, it proved to be clearly wrong when he went on tour- but they were saying Cole was trash at that time. They had Meek way higher than everyone." View this post on Instagram Instagram PostIn the same episode, Rory, Mal, and their crew members, Demaris and Julian, addressed who the better rapper was between Meek Mill and Future. While Rory sided with Future in the debate, stating he made better music than Meek, his co-host had a different opinion.Contending with his co-host's views, Mal said:"You think Future raps better than Meek? If you put a beat on right now and these n***as start rapping right here, you think Future's gon' out-rap Meek? We watched Meek with matted braids on the corners of Philly rap his way to a f***ing private jet. Future don't rap better than that n***a, man. Not on no f***ing day of the year. Future? He make better songs, he's a better artist."According to AllHipHop's report dated July 31, 2025, Meek responded to the news of being one of the highest-ranking artists as per YouTube Music's latest metrics by teasing new music.