Megan Thee Stallion
Good News
300 ENTERTAINMENT
7/10
Megan Pete is goddamn resilient. Over the past year, she’s endured tragedy with the loss of her mother and grandma, all while becoming a household name and cultural aphrodisiac as Megan Thee Stallion—not to mention the recent episode where she revealed she was shot by Tory Lanez. From taking over a whole season to getting a co-sign from fellow Houstonian icon Beyoncé, Megan’s stardom has continuously skyrocketed without letting scrutiny or grief exhaust her. On her official debut album Good News, Megan Thee Stallion addresses these hurdles (most brilliantly with the opener “Shots Fired”). As one of the hardest working artists today, these songs strive to make you feel as sexy and confident as she feels about herself, while sprinkling in age-old truths that many in America ignore.
You might not be well aware of this, but we live in a bullshit, sexist, racist world. Women—specifically Black women—have to work nth times more to be taken seriously, to be successful, to survive. The evidence is there in her feud with Lanez, and it’s there in the murder of Brianna Taylor, where justice has yet to be served eight months later. Meg used her platform to call out Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron during her SNL performance, and wrote an op-ed for the New York Times. She continues to inform in her music, giving a shout out to Taylor on “Shots Fired,” while she criticizes the leeches and piranhas of her situation with Lanez. The two stories alongside each other illustrate that despite status or celebrity, both women were met with doubt and their cases with inaction.
From her sharp delivery and bite-me bravado, Meg flexes at 150 percent on Good News. She holds herself to high standards, and thus anyone she fucks with (or fucks) has to be of the same caliber. “You wanna see my nails when they done? Shit, pay for ’em,” she proposes on the spunky Webbie-sampling “Sugar Baby.” If you want to make an impression, invest in a bad bitch! Good News firmly states that Megan Thee Stallion is fully capable of icing herself out and loving herself enough for two people.
Despite the difficulties of the past year, her self-confidence is what pulls her out of the weeds. She relinquishes no control, gives up none of her power. “Don’t fuck me like that / Fuck me like this,” she directs on the eerie but mesmerizing “Cry Baby.” “I’m just in love with myself,” she told Vulture last year. “I just really want other women to feel like that because I feel like sometimes we walk around so uptight and we walk around trying to be something that we’re not, trying to hold up that image that we think that other people want to see.”
Good News exhibits all the bells and whistles without buckling under the weight of the hype. There’s the iconic samples—from Biggie to Naughty By Nature. There’s the star-studded cameos, including 2 Chainz, SZA, Popcaan, Big Sean, and City Girls. There’s even the twinkling synth track “Don’t Rock Me to Sleep,” where she sings most of the song over a sort of chewy bubblegum jam, thought it loses its flavor quickly. It would be great to hear Meg venture into more dynamism with her voice, but there needs to be more substance aside from sterile filler words.
Good News gives us the pimp, the party girl, and the polished diva. Not every track is a platinum banger, and there is one already-poorly-aged Tiger King reference. But Good News isn’t meant to be a simple introduction. It’s Megan Thee Stallion at her most agile and hi-def. It’s our invitation to the coronation of this generation’s hip-hop royalty.
