Anything Men Can Do, Megan Thee Stallion Can Do Better
There are a couple of songs that act as a universal call to the dance floor, to dip real low and shake that ass real good: Crime Mob's "Knuck If You Buck," Juvenile's "Back That Azz Up." It’s a similar kind of magical spell that possesses Megan Thee Stallion’s fans, affectionately known as “hotties,” if they hear the rapper’s thick southern drawl pour over a booming beat. A couple shots of cognac-Megan prefers D'ussé or Hennessy-and suddenly you’re squatting with your hands down low, twerking like the Houston rapper herself to bravado-fueling lines like "I keep it realer than real / F-k all the critics and f-k how they feel." Bad knees, who?
Megan Thee Stallion’s career was exhilarating from the start. In a Houston cypher video uploaded to YouTube two years ago, Houston rapper Vinci steps up first to fire off his bars; they’re good enough to let play. Then Megan emerges, in teeny-tiny shorts and towering heels, a self-assured smooth-talker who can run circles around anyone who steps up to the mic: “Name a bitch you know that’s f-king with my flow,” she brags. As one of hundreds of commenters wrote, "Megan came, she saw & she conquered." She continues to walk over Drake’s “4 P.M. in Calabasas” beat with ease, switching between a range of flows. It's clear she’s in control. Of what? Her sexuality, her confidence, and probably your man.
That brash delivery, unwavering sex appeal, and grit has made Megan hip-hop’s woman of the moment; they're also the reason fans everywhere can’t stop yelling her “Real Hot Girl Shit” catchphrase 'round the clock.
This confidence seems grafted to her DNA. She grew up under the roof of her mother Holly Thomas, a.k.a. Houston rapper Holly-Wood. Megan remembers watching her mother writing raps and would often accompany Thomas to the studio. In her household, music censorship wasn't a thing. “There wasn’t anything I couldn’t listen to, so it definitely made me more free to say anything I wanted to say,” Megan says over the phone from New York, just a few days after her performance at this year's Hot 97 Summer Jam. “That's what I feel like my music represents-having no limits or restrictions.”
She gravitated to the smooth, laid-back sounds of Pimp C and Three Six Mafia, Southern hip-hop royalty whose drank-soaked tales of drugs, sex, and money helped establish the South as a hub for hip-hop, different from the east and west coast rhymers that were running the game for so long, and later influenced her own lyrical content. "I was so young, I didn't even know what Pimp C was saying or what it meant. I just knew it sounded good," Megan says of the late UGK rapper. But if the boys could rap about sex and money, Megan wanted to do it as well. "The feeling that his music gave me, I was like, Hell yeah, I want to give people that feeling. I'm a pimp, too."
So in 2017, Megan dropped her debut mixtape, Make It Hot, with seven tracks that introduced her perennial themes: bedroom desires, hustling and grinding, denouncing her detractors, and assurances that she's a match for any man's talent. “I'm new in the game, that's rookie / Ain't nobody had these cookies / If you wanna meet a pimp then book me / I ain't met a bitch yet that shook me,” she announces on “Intro.”
On Fever, the rapper's newest mixtape, and her debut offering under 300 Entertainment, where she signed at the end of 2018, Megan is typically witty, confident, lustful, and, above all, Houston as hell. Where her last release Tina Snow gave fans slow-paced, sultry late-night bops like "Good At" and "Cognac Queen," Fever directs you to disregard men's feelings, head to the dance floor (D'ussé in hand, of course), strap on your cowboy hat, and turn up.
In Megan’s world, men are disposable beings; they might come in handy when you’re looking for a good time. But for the most part, she gives them a taste of their own medicine, flipping the script on double standards in a genre traditionally steeped in misogyny. She discusses the struggles she and her fellow emcees have to endure to succeed in the rap game in her upcoming Apple Music documentary as part of the streaming service's Next Up series. “Girls, we have to go 10 times harder than guys,” she says in the trailer, released earlier this week. “We are still expected to give you the bars, give you the look, give you the routine. This is me-I wanna be a rapper, this is it.”
"The dudes get to say whatever they want to say; they can say they want to come shoot your granny's house up, or have sex with however many women in their rap,” she tells me, “and if I say how I'm going to come over and ride it, then I’ve said the worst thing you could ever say? You just can't please everybody.”
Not that she wants to please anyone. On the Fever opener, cut-throat missive "Realer," she's still ready to go to war with anybody standing in her way. "Y'all praisin' bitches that's doin' the minimum / They put that check in my hand, now I'm killin' 'em," she raps over a eerie beat. “You can't control what comes out of anybody’s mouth; you can't control how someone feels, acts,” she says. “What I rap about may not be what you’re going through in life. So if I want to rap about sex or getting money, then let me do that. And if you don't like it, don't listen to it.”
Megan is in every way a Texas rapper, blending the slick, laid-back delivery of her Houston icons with foul-mouthed assertiveness that makes you think twice before stepping to her-swag reminiscent of Lil' Kim's Hardcore. Along with Travis Scott, the other Texas superstar, she's departing from the state's signature bouncy, chopped and screwed sound, but they're both keeping Houston in the rap conversation.
"Houston is just where the whole swag comes from, the culture," she explains. "We have some of the most legendary groups and people coming out the city. I know I have big shoes to fill because these people are legends. I don't want to disappoint the city." But she's her own creation, taking her town's legacy in a new direction. "I knew I didn't want to sound exactly like the typical Houston rapper, you know what I'm saying?"
Her Houston roots peek through on Fever's "Pimpin," produced by southern rap vet and Three Six Mafia's Juicy J, where she takes a page out of Pimp C's handbook, teaching ladies the art of finesse while giving the fellas a quick crash course on how to please her. Twerk anthem "Simon Says" is a steamy summer banger that, like the children's game, instructs listeners to put their hands on your hips, knees, and feet, and-not like the original-"bust it open like a freak."
It's another Juicy collaboration-and nabbing a production credit from him felt like validation for the new Hot Girl on the block. "Before he came in there, I just wanted to make sure that I had everything right and tight," she says. "I was just like, 'Look, Juicy, I'm serious. I really do this." The legendary producer was impressed and they ended up working on three tracks, including "Simon Says": "He played [it] for me and thought it would be really dope if I hopped on the song with my verse and a hook. I immediately started twerking as soon as I heard the song."
As mentioned, that's pretty much what happens when most people hear a Megan Thee Stallion song-at a party, on the train, at the gas station (the latter ignited the viral #BigOleFreak challenge, in which fans hop out of their cars at a gas station and twerk like nobody's watching). Her style is undeniable, and the rapper's unyielding attitude and sheer positivity create a world where women can leave their troubles at the door and just have fun. "My music is me letting the world know how confident I am in myself, and me basically telling other women-and guys-how confident and how comfortable I believe they should be," she says. "I just want [the fans] to feel as good as me and know that there's nothing wrong with being unapologetically themselves."
After all, sometimes even a Hot Girl needs her own help: "Not every day is a good day for me," she says. But she knows exactly what to do. "I turn on 'Shake That,' because as soon as I hear my voice saying, 'Shake that ass, bitch,' the day is getting started. I'm already twerking and having a good time."
Main look: Faux fur coat, Versace; Swimsuit, Onia; Suede heels, Aquazzura; Hat, Clyde
Hair by Alonzo Arnold
Makeup by Akil McCoy
Styling by Justine Carreon and fashion assistant Sara Abdulkader
Special thanks to Hudson Hotel New York and D'ussé
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