Real hot girl shit? Absolutely!
Good News - this week’s Feature Album – is billed as Megan Thee Stallion’s debut album, but it’s a debut in name only. It’s really a stylish victory lap for a rapper who’s already been crowned one of 2020’s biggest and best.
The 25-year-old Houston native has already had two blockbuster singles this year, hitting #1 with a remix of ‘Savage’ featuring Beyoncé and the inescapable Cardi B duet ‘WAP’. She sees out 2020 with an impressive range of accomplishments under her belt: GQ’s ‘Rapper of the Year’; one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people; and how many artists can say they published a political op-ed in The New York Times in the same calendar space as achieving viral ubiquity on TikTok?
Good News arrives after March’s Suga EP and last year’s don’t-call-it-an-album mixtape Fever, but it should really be called Old News because it tells us what we know already: that Megan Thee Stallion is at the top of her game.
None of that makes the album a redundant listen. Far from it. It’s a lean, entertainting showcase that goes hard in proving nobody is crafting high-energy raps about sex positivity and self-affirmation with such infectious confidence as Meg.
And if you’re arriving to this album expecting more Wet Ass Wordplay - good news, you won’t be disappointed.
One of the naughtiest wordsmiths in the game, Hot Girl Meg hasn’t run out of fun, filthy ways to describe the joy of f**king, or her talents for it. Not by a long shot. Here’s a few highlights of the album’s bawdiest bars...
‘Invest in this pussy, boy – support black business’
‘Let you put your hook in my bumper like a repo’
‘I’mma make him eat me out while I’m watchin’ anime/pussy like a wild fox, lookin’ for a Sasuke’
Then there’s ‘Cry Baby’, a lusty collab with DaBaby where Meg offers a choking, spanking, spitting, slurping guide to bumping and grinding. If you’re not grinning, you’re definitely blushing.
Besides flexing her considerable skill with rhyming structures, this outlandishly raunchy wordplay is perfect for catching out conservative dudes who just love policing female sexuality (political commentators, news anchors, and Republican candidates among them).
Even Snoop Doog, famed writer of dirty raps who named his debut Doggystyle, thinks ‘WAP’ is too explicitly horny.
On the other hand, the meme-friendly hit has fans in Tame Impala places. “For me, it’s the most memorable song of 2020,” Kevin Parker said during his recent Like A Version interview. “I just think it’s a perfect song. It feels great, the lyrics are great, the production fits. It’s so outlandish and brave.”
Kevin gets it, and so do the many music outlets who named it song of the year - Megan is a cunning linguist. She isn’t tossing off deliciously crude punchlines simply for shock value, she’s celebrating sexual supremacy and female agency and having a helluva time doing it.
When she commands ‘Don’t f**k me like that, f**k me like this’ in the middle of ‘Cry Baby’, there’s no doubting about who’s in control.
So yeah, Meg’s skill for the salacious is unparalleled. But that tends to overshadow how sharp she is as a rhymer across the board, whether that’s dispensing Insta-worthy wisdom (‘You can’t have opinions on no shit you ain’t payin’ for’) or quotable put-downs (All them bitches scary cats/I call ‘em Carole Baskins’).
Blessed with the gift of gab, she has all the boss flow and charisma of rap’s historic greats, and Good News does a great job of positioning Thee Stallion in a lineage of all-timers with some inspired allusions to the genre’s history through production and performance.
‘Go Crazy’ fuses classic samples of Naughty By Nature’s ‘O.P.P’ and The Jackson 5’s ‘ABC’. ‘Work That’ speeds up Juvenile’s cult 2006 single ‘Rodeo’ for some image positivity (‘If you in love with your body, bitch, take off your clothes’).
‘Girls In The Hood’ is a feminist rework of Eazy-E’s ‘Boyz-n-the-Hood’, while ‘Freaky Girls’ is a back-and-forth collab juxtaposing Megan’s Southern snarl with SZA’s soulful burr against a sound rooted in classic ‘90s Gangsta Rap. It even borrows the warbling synth sound made famous by Dre’s ‘Nuthin’ But A G Thang’. (Take that, Snoop.)
Most inspired of all is how album opener ‘Shots Fired’ samples Notorious B.I.G.’s ‘Who Shot Ya?’, Megan consciously flipping Biggie’s original to address the well-publicised incident where she was allegedly shot by Tory Lanez.
Quick recap: in July, Meg was shot in both feet and claimed on Instagram that Lanez was the culprit. As well as generating a lot of hot takes, it triggered a wave of misogynist backlash, culminating in Lanez releasing DAYSTAR, an entire album seemingly dedicated to defending himself by undermining Stallion as a liar (and much worse).
‘Shots Fired’ is Meg’s right of reply. She didn’t have to respond at all, but she exacts the iciest of revenge by opening her anticipated album with a takedown that savages Lanez for barking ‘bout his followers, dollars, and goofy shit’; then bitingly mocks his firearm of choice: ‘You shot a 5’10’’ bitch with a .22 … a pussy n***a with a pussy gun.’
And she still manages to take in the bigger picture, lamenting the lack of accountability around protecting Black women. ‘We still ain’t got no f**kin’ justice for Breonna Taylor!?’
Arguably the best diss track in recent memory (and coming after the Noname x J. Cole beef, that’s saying something) she savours completely eviscerating her target without even bothering to mention his name. More significantly, by addressing the controversy right out of the gate, Megan is free to focus on rapping about more important matters.
Good News has all the requisite big guests required of a 2020 blockbuster but Megan pretty much outraps them all. 2 Chainz, Big Sean, Young Thug, and Lil Durk all come through, but sound like they’re bending to fit Megan’s signature style rather than her borrowing their shine.
The female features are even greater, which should come as no surprise after ‘WAP’ and ‘Savage’. The way Megan vibes off SZA, City Girls, and fellow Texan, Beyoncé, provides some of the album’s best chemistry.
Meg is also self-assured enough to try venturing outside her comfort zone. She sings over ‘80s synthpop on ‘Don’t Rock Me To Sleep’, and has a stab at dancehall on ‘Intercourse’, with the help of Jamaican vet Popcaan. These moves aren’t entirely successful, but they do help break up the sleazy hip hop gear Good News occasionally gets stuck in.
At 17 tracks, Megan’s raunchy raps risk wearing thin, but hey, if you’re as pro at that kind of thing as she is, why not play to your strengths? It’d be like asking an athlete to aim for anything less than Olympic Gold.
But let’s not bury the lede, Megan Thee Stallion has topped off a massive year with an album that encompasses all her strengths in one package - a witty, wonderful twerk of art.