It’s laborious to overstate Megan Thee Stallion’s success: She isn’t just a rap star, however the type of supercharged celeb who seems in commercials and flicks and hobnobs with pop stars, all whereas serving as the brand new flagbearer of Houston rap heritage. On MEGAN, her latest album, you may really feel the strain on her to maintain all these plates spinning—to keep up momentum, to not fuck it up. After Tina Snow, the 2018 EP that cemented Megan as a rapper who’s as raunchy, humorous, and charismatic as anybody, all of her full-length initiatives have, to various levels, felt like workouts in changing into all the things to everybody. Nevertheless it’s by no means been as distracting as it’s on MEGAN, an uneven album so preoccupied with giving each single sort of fan precisely what they need that it would as nicely be crowdsourced.
Do you share Megan’s infatuation with anime? Then you’ll get a thrill out of “Otaku Sizzling Lady,” which samples a music from Jujutsu Kaisen and options an intro from one of many present’s voice actors. Bankroll Bought It’s drum-heavy flip of the soundtrack is uninteresting—although it’s not like he’s working with an anime famend for its music—and the character references are earnest however unbearably corny. The higher music that leans into her fondness for Japanese tradition is the multilingual “Mamushi,” which pulls off the theme with out flattening her character. Possibly as an alternative you want new Megan to play at your Pilates class: She’s received you with the feel-good “Worthy,” a Lizzo-coded pop music. These muscle groups are put to simpler use on “Spin,” the place the silky Victoria Monét hook enhances aggressively flirty Megan verses. The fluffy finger-snap beat sounds prefer it may have been on Love/Hate. (Come to consider it, Megan would have ripped “Shawty Is Da Shit.”)
Then there are the songs for these deeply invested in Megan’s beefs and squabbles. I can image followers gathering in group chats, dissecting subliminals and clues like they’re in an Agatha Christie e book membership. After the final three months, I’m all feuded out, so I’m much less taken with that recreation. Nonetheless, she lands a number of good jokes on “Hiss,” the place she calls out the misogynistic dudes in rap who can’t hold her identify out of their mouths. (Drake has had a one-sided vendetta towards her for some time now; Megan hits again with some BBL Drizzy theories of her personal.) “Rattle,” which has a quick, groovy beat that melodic South Florida rappers would eat up, leaves a sting. “’Trigger the niggas don’t beef with the niggas/They frightened of one another, however beat on the ladies,” she assaults; she may very well be speaking a few dozen completely different rappers, which makes the music really feel like a pointy indictment of hip-hop tradition normally. As crucial as that line is, she nonetheless has enjoyable chanting, “Ain’t received no tea on me, this ho’ assume she TMZ” whereas hitting a Harley Quinn cackle within the background.
