Houston's Megan Thee Stallion is enjoying her rise to the top, and the recent signee to 300 Entertainment is creating a buzz in hip hop. The 24-year-old took the internet by storm with her "Big Ole Freak" single that inspired a twerking, booty shakin', challenge that's sweeping Instagram. Helping to continue the conversation about her music, the rapper caught up with Rolling Stone for her first feature with the magazine to talk about the evolution of her rap persona, something that began when she started writing rhymes at just seven-years-old.
“I feel like I have to put on for my city, because we have so many legends and so many greats,” Megan said. “But I don’t feel like we ever really had a female rapper come from Houston or Texas and shut s**t down. So that’s where I’m coming from with it." Readers were surprised to learn that Megan is still enrolled in college at Texas Southern University and continues to attend class as a full-time student.
"I try not to make me being a rapper a huge deal," she says. "Just like I’m missing class sometimes because I have to do a show, somebody [else] missed a class because they don’t want to be there. They can’t treat either one of us no different. I just try to get all my work done and turned in as soon as I can."
Megan Thee Stallion has also been criticized for her sexually explicit lyrics, even though she isn't the first female rapper to do so (how many Lil Kim songs can you name?). When asked about negative responses to her rhymes, she noted the double standard. "You let the boys come up in here and talk about how they gon’ run a train on all our friends and they want some head and they want to shoot everything up, and they want to do drugs,” she says. "Well, we should be able to go equally as hard. I don’t want to hear none of that ‘That’s offensive!’ or 'All she talk about is pussy.' I know I’m striking a nerve that’s pissing that one specific man off.”