The rapper has received incessant online abuse since she was shot by Tory Lanez in 2020
In a new interview with InStyle, rapper Megan Thee Stallion announced that she is taking a break from creating music to focus on her ‘healing’.
This announcement comes as no surprise as Megan has been the victim of misogynoir and incessant online abuse since she was shot by fellow rapper Tory Lanez. On July 12 2020, Lanez shot Megan multiple times in both her feet after Kylie Jenner’s pool party in Los Angeles. Two years later, on December 23 2022, he was convicted of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle, and discharge of a firearm with gross negligence. Even though Megan was the victim of Lanez’s abuse, mainstream discourse has primarily positioned her as the wrongdoer.
Since his conviction, several petitions have been made in defence of Lanez, with one petition amassing more than 30,000 signatures to appeal the verdict. Additionally, numerous social media personalities, rappers and podcasts came out during the trial and after the ruling, accusing Megan of lying about her assault. Most famously, rapper and all-around embarrassment Drake accused Megan of lying in his song “Circo Loco” from his album Her Loss, just a month before Lanez’s conviction.
This is a story as old (and as painful) as time. A Black woman will come out about her abuse, and instead of being met with support and praise, she is laughed at, ridiculed and called a liar. We’ve witnessed this happen to countless Black women: Tina Turner, Anita Hill, Megan Markle, Rihanna, and Keke Palmer. The list is long and endless. We only find space to have remorse for victims of abuse when they die of old age or at the hands of their abusers – only then are they shown love and support.
During the trial, Megan gave an emotional testimony confessing that she didn’t want to live anymore due to the harassment she faced since the shooting: “I wish he had just shot and killed me if I knew I had to go through this torture.” When the assault occurred, Megan was intent on not getting the police involved, as the Black Lives Matter protests had just previously erupted in the summer of 2022. In an interview with Gayle King, Megan confessed that she downplayed her injuries to the police because she didn’t want to die at their hands. “For some reason, I was just trying to protect all of us because I didn’t want them to kill us. Even though this person just did this to me, my first reaction still was to try to save us. I didn’t want to see anybody die.”
Tory Lanez is set to be sentenced on 13 June. He faces 22 years in prison and deportation back to Canada. While this traumatic trial steadily comes to an end, Megan told InStyle that she is spending her days with her dogs, working out and finding new ways to protect her peace. We can only hope that Megan’s break from music will prompt meaningful discussions around eradicating misogynoir in the music industry before it’s too late.
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