سبوت ميديا – Spot Media

تابع كل اخبار الفن والمشاهير والتكنلوجيا والرياضة والعديد من المواضيع الاجتماعية والثقافية

Music

Megan Thee Stallion Will Not Back Down

She’s reigning over rap and pop culture while reeling from loss, violence, and a feeling of betrayal. Here, the superstar opens up about all of it like never before — including her most detailed interview yet on the shooting and its aftermath

FOR JUST AN hour Megan Thee Stallion’s, world shrinks to the size of a Los Angeles escape room. Here, on this April evening, there are no festivals to rehearse for, no verses to perfect, no brand deals to broker, no rumors to right or trauma to relive or pretrial hearings to sit through — just Megan, a small crew, and a steely determination to conquer the game. 

“We did one before, and we were pretty bad at it,” she says of her last escape-room experience. After we enter our room, Megan and I, along with three members of her team, each have a foot chained to the floor. It seems we’ve been captured by wayward seamen cursed for all eternity for their sins, and we have 60 minutes to escape their ghost ship. First, we need to get the shackles off our feet. There’s a grid of rusty iron separating us from the other half of the room, where what looks like a birdcage hangs from the ceiling. I spot a key inside. 

We prod at it with our hands and wooden poles we’ve been given. “Do we want to ask for help?” I suggest. “No!” Megan cries, matter-of-factly. Sam, of her Roc Nation management team, eventually knocks the key toward us with one of the poles. 

“Are you competitive?” I ask Sam. “Stupid competitive,” he replies. “I’m fucking crazy competitive,” Megan one-ups, then shows just what she means. As we make our way from room to room, Megan takes the lead, climbing on stools, peering through peepholes, guiding us through mazes, and turning over props. Her head swivels from corner to corner, surveying every crevice for the next way out. 

Lazy loaded image
Ramona Rosales for Rolling Stone. Fashion Direction by Alex Badia. Production by SJ Ashby and Ryan Holt for Anderson Hopkins|Kindly Productions. Hair by Kellon Deryck. Makeup by Lauren Elise Child. Nails by Michelle Nguyen. Styling by Eric Archibald and Hanna Isaksson. Market Editor Lizzy Rosenberg. Tailoring by Alex Navarro. BODYSUIT BY REY ORTIZ. EARRINGS AND BRACELETS BY ALEXIS BITTAR

Eventually, we make it out with only a handful of hints from our game master. “The first time we did it, it took way longer,” Megan says. “I’m starting to understand the rooms more, though. Next time we’ll be thinking three steps ahead.”

Sure, breaking out of the ghost ship was hard, but it’s designed to be conquered. Megan has to look at her life the same way, or else the weight of the loss, violence, and vitriol she’s faced will pulverize her. 

In just a few years, Megan Jovon Ruth Pete has gone from rapping at Houston kickbacks and strip clubs to becoming one of the biggest new superstars in music, assembling a legion of fans she’s dubbed Thee Hotties. Along the way, in March 2019, she lost her mother — a Houston rapper known as Holly-Wood, who raised Megan on UGK and Biggie, and later became her manager — to brain cancer, then lost her great-grandmother just two weeks later. (Megan’s father, Joseph Pete Jr., was incarcerated for the first eight years of her life; after he got home, he and Megan were attached at the hip until he died when she was 15.)

Those losses left Megan, now 27, without the people she trusted most as she navigated skyrocketing fame, graduated from Texas Southern University (with a bachelor’s degree in health administration), and, most shockingly, endured a July 2020 shooting allegedly at the hands of Tory Lanez, a recording artist and former friend. She survived, but has been locked in a contentious battle in court — and the court of public opinion — ever since. 

Even without any extra emotional distress, life as hip-hop’s resident It girl and one of the best rappers alive can be intense. During the three months I got to know her, Megan premiered her first Super Bowl commercial, rehearsed for and shot her first major-movie role, released a single featuring Dua Lipa while joining her on tour, became the first woman to rap on the Oscar stage, presented the Grammy for Best New Artist (which she had won the year prior), completely shut shit down at Coachella, graced the Met Gala’s red carpet, performed at the Billboard Music Awards (where she took home the prize for Top Female Rap Artist, and also endured some odd, clingy behavior from supermodel Cara Delevingne, who fangirled over Megan all evening), and, oh yeah, wrote and recorded much of her highly anticipated second studio album, which she hopes to have out this summer. “I want to take you through so many different emotions,” she says of the album, an effort to process her pain without losing sight of her strength. “At first you was twerking, now you might be crying.”

Her friends, her team, and escape rooms help, but night after night, she still dreams about the shooting. “‘Right now we’re going through some dark things. You are built for this,’” she says, coaching herself. “‘God must got something good planned for you, because I don’t think he’ll put you through this if he wasn’t going to give you your reward at the end.’” 

After winding through the streets of some of L.A.’s most-gilded neighborhoods, past Beverly Grove and through the Hills, we arrive at the Bel-Air mansion Megan has made her home base for the month of Coachella. The sprawling home feels busy, if a bit icy, with its towering, crisp white walls, and various bags and boxes in corners. A few of the people who keep the gears of the Megan machine turning mill about quietly. Two of her five dogs, gray Frenchies named 4oe and Oneita, bark hello from their kennels. (She also owns a lizard.) Her pets, innocent and affectionate, put Megan at ease. “I don’t think they would do anything to hurt me,” she says. “That’s something I know for a fact.”

Megan and I take our seats in an elegant dining room for a dinner of six vegetarian courses prepared by her chef. As he drops off some crudité, Megan laughs to herself. “They are really embarrassing me,” she says of her team. 

“How so?”

“Because they are being so formal.” 

I ask her if things are normally more low-key around her. 

“We are all playful. They’re being so serious tonight.”

After her chef leaves us with a sweet-squash dish that Megan loves, she notes how kind he is. Megan has a habit of keeping the people she takes to close: her Roc Nation team; her longtime manager, T. Farris; Emilio Coochie, who has been photographing and filming her since 2018; her hairstylist and best friend, Kellon; the women who do her makeup and nails; her best friends from college; and her close friend from high school, Callie. “I don’t know if it’s a Southern thing,” she explains, “but I love feeling like this is my family. This is my thing. This is safe.” 

In July 2020, a year after her mother and great-grandmother died, and six weeks after topping the Billboard Hot 100 with her “Savage” remix, Megan was looking for family, filling a void with new friendships and fun nights out. Rapper and singer Tory Lanez was one of those new friends, and the evening of July 11 began as one of those nights. 

Forty-five minutes into dinner, she confronts the toll of that evening head on. It started with Megan streaming herself, her friend Kylie Jenner, and Lanez lounging in Jenner’s pool on Instagram Live. After the poolside hang, Megan headed home in a car with Lanez, his driver, and her former best friend from Houston, Kelsey Harris. Megan explained what she says happened next in an April interview with CBS’ Gayle King. 

Megan said an argument broke out between Harris and Lanez in the car, prompting her to ask the driver to pull over and let her out. Megan got out, but says the others persuaded her to get back in, since they were close to their destination. After getting back into the car, she said, the arguing escalated. According to an LAPD detective who interviewed Megan, she and Harris argued, too; L.A. prosecutors say Megan and Lanez also argued. 

When Megan got out of the car for good, she said, Lanez shouted “Dance, bitch!” and began shooting at her. Her feet bleeding, Megan dropped to the ground and crawled to a stranger’s driveway. Speaking to Gayle King, Megan said Lanez apologized profusely, and begged for Megan’s silence by offering her and Harris “a million dollars.” Police vehicles and helicopters swarmed the scene; saying she feared law enforcement would respond with deadly force if they found out a Black man was holding a gun, Megan told police she stepped on glass. (Lanez has denied shooting Megan; his representative did not respond on the record to a request for further comment.)

Lanez was arrested for carrying a concealed firearm. Meanwhile, Megan was taken to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, still maintaining she had stepped on glass. As officers left the hospital, a doctor reportedly told Megan there were bullet fragments in both of her feet. (CBS and Page Six later obtained the hospital’s medical report that corroborates Megan’s account of her hospital admittance and bullet wounds.)

Megan says that, at first, she tried to protect Lanez by keeping the shooting private. Then came the spread of jokes, memes, and what she says is false information — like rumors that Megan and Lanez had a sexual relationship and that she became jealous as Lanez and Jenner interacted that night. Soon, though, it became too much for her.

Lazy loaded image
Choker by Laurel DeWitt. Earrings and Rings by Alexis Bittar. RAMONA ROSALES FOR ROLLING STONE

On Aug. 20, 2020, just weeks after releasing her smash Cardi B collaboration “W.A.P.,” Megan named Lanez as her alleged assailant in an Instagram Live stream: “You shot me and you got your publicist and your people going to these blogs lying.” In October 2020, Lanez was charged with one felony count of assault with a semiautomatic firearm and another for carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle. The case is set to go to trial in September; Lanez has pleaded not guilty. 

Back in the L.A. mansion, the dinner table between us feels a mile wide as Megan begins to cry, still struggling to process everything that happened. I ask if I can sit beside her, and she agrees, eyes damp and hurt radiating outward. “I thought we had a real connection,” she says of Lanez. She believed she and the rapper had bonded over the mutual loss of their mothers; Lanez’s mom died of anemia complications when he was 11. “I thought he knew me. And I never would’ve thought he would’ve shot at me at all.”

“I never put my hands on this man,” she continues. “I never did anything to him. There was an argument. People argue every day. Friends argue every day.”

Megan’s scars run deep. First, there was the grueling physical recovery. “What nobody knows is, I had to get the surgery the same night. I stayed in the hospital in California for maybe four days,” she says. “Then I was in New York for a while. Both of my legs wrapped up. I could not walk. I still have bullet fragments in my feet right now. I was very scared that I was not able to be Megan Thee Stallion no more. And I was fucked up.” She began physical therapy in New York before traveling to Tampa, Florida, where she regained the ability to walk.

There are the nightmares. Then, there’s the embarrassment, the way she blames herself for what happened and how she handled it. “I feel shame, a little bit, because even after he shot me, I still was thinking about everybody else in the car,” she says. “I thought everybody in the car was my friend, [and] the whole time, that’s not how they thought of me. That’s what really hurts.”

The incident, Megan implies, was a betrayal on two fronts. Megan claims that Harris met with Lanez at a hotel less than two days after the shooting. “I’m like, ‘Kelsey, as my best friend, why would you meet up with the person you saw shoot your best friend?’” Megan tells me. “She said, ‘Megan, y’all wasn’t answering my calls. My back was against the wall. I didn’t know what to do.’ What the fuck do you mean your back is against the wall? You’re the only person in this situation that would clear this up for me.

“This girl told me out her mouth, ‘He told me, “Oh, thank you for not saying nothing. Now let me invest in your business. Let me do this. Let me do that.”’ And all I know was, from that day on, she never said nothing else about the whole situation online.” (Harris did not respond to a request for comment; Lanez’s representative did not respond on the record to a request for comment on this allegation.)

Before pleading not guilty to the charges against him, Lanez released an album on the back of the incident. On it, he claims he’s being framed, while alluding to a soured romance with Megan. (“That man was never my ex. You were never my man,” Megan insists.) Lanez continued to allude on Twitter to a sexual relationship with both Megan and Harris. After Megan posted screenshots of an apology Lanez texted to her hours after the shooting, Lanez wrote, “Good Dick had me fucking 2 best friends…and I got caught …that’s what I apologized 4 …it’s sick how u Spun it tho . . .

 453 total views

هل كان المقال مفيداً ؟

اترك رد