Megan Thee Stallion goes into explicit detail about the July 2020 incident in which Tory Lanez is alleged to have shot at the Hot Girl star in a new Rolling Stone feature in which the rapper describes the excruciating, lengthy recovery from the physical and emotional injuries she suffered that night.
In the midst of the story — which involves the writer joining Megan (born Megan Pete) and her team at an escape room — the rapper reveals that she still dreams about the shooting on an almost nightly basis. “‘Right now we’re going through some dark things. You are built for this,’” she says to herself as a kind of mantra. “‘God must got something good planned for you, because I don’t think he’ll put you through this if he wasn’t going to give you your reward at the end.’”
Meg — who lost both her beloved mother and grandmother in the year before her breakthrough with the Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Savage” remix — said she was looking for a new family to fill the void she felt from those difficult deaths. At the time, rapper/singer Lanez (born Daystar Peterson) was a new friend who she thought might help her heal. Then, on July 11, 2020, after hanging at Kylie Jenner’s house with friends, she got into a car with Lanez, his driver and her former best friend from Houston, Kelsey Harris.
After an argument erupted between Harris and Lanez, Megan asked the driver to let her out and was then convinced to get back in before the argument sparked up again, which she told an LAPD detective then also involved her. When Megan got out of the car a second time, Lanez reportedly said “Dance, b—h!” and began shooting at her feet. In the interview, the rapper described crawling to a stranger’s driveway and Lanez apologizing profusely and begging for forgiveness and even allegedly offering her a “million dollars” to stay quiet.
Fearing the swarming police might respond with deadly force if they saw a Black man holding a gun, Megan initially said she stepped on glass as Lanez, who has denied shooting Megan, was arrested for carrying a concealed firearm. Doctors told her that night that she had bullet fragments in both her feet and after initially trying to protect Lanez, she spoke out when a raft of memes and jokes flooded the internet with false information, including rumors that she and Lanez were in a sexual relationship.
“I thought we had a real connection,” she told RS about Lanez, who she thought she’d bonded with over the loss of their mothers; his mom died of anemia complications when he was 11. “I thought he knew me. And I never would’ve thought he would’ve shot at me at all.” After initially staying quiet about the details of that night, on August 20, 2020, Megan went on Instagram Live and named Lanez as her assailant, saying, “You shot me and you got your publicist and your people going to these blogs lying.”
Lanez was charged with one felony count of assault with a semiautomatic firearms and a second one for carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle in Oct. 2020; Lanez has pleaded not guilty and a trial is slated for September.
“I never put my hands on this man,” she told RS. “I never did anything to him. There was an argument. People argue every day. Friends argue every day.” She detailed the recovery, including the news that she had to have surgery the night of the incident and was hospitalized in Los Angeles for four days after. “Then I was in New York for a while. Both of my legs wrapped up. I could not walk. I still have bullet fragments in my feet right now. I was very scared that I was not able to be Megan Thee Stallion no more. And I was fucked up,” she said, adding that she started physical therapy in New York before traveling to Tampa, where she regained the ability to walk.
In addition to the physical scars, Megan said she still has nightmares and a sense of intense shame and blame she puts on herself from the incident. “I feel shame, a little bit, because even after he shot me, I still was thinking about everybody else in the car,” she said. “I thought everybody in the car was my friend, [and] the whole time, that’s not how they thought of me. That’s what really hurts.”
In what she described as yet another betrayal, Megan said her former friend Harris allegedly met up with Lanez at a hotel two days after the shooting. I’m like, ‘Kelsey, as my best friend, why would you meet up with the person you saw shoot your best friend?’” Megan said. “She said, ‘Megan, y’all wasn’t answering my calls. My back was against the wall. I didn’t know what to do.’ What the fuck do you mean your back is against the wall? You’re the only person in this situation that would clear this up for me.
“This girl told me out her mouth, ‘He told me, “Oh, thank you for not saying nothing. Now let me invest in your business. Let me do this. Let me do that.”’ And all I know was, from that day on, she never said nothing else about the whole situation online.” RS said neither Lanez nor Harris’ reps responded to requests for comment.
What’s also hurtful, Megan said, is the endless parade of online harassment and dubious claims made about the incident, as well as ghoulish celebration of Lanez. “I see people saying, ‘Damn, I would’ve shot that bitch too,’” she said. “In some kind of way I became the villain. And I don’t know if people don’t take it seriously because I seem strong. I wonder if it’s because of the way I look. Is it because I’m not light enough? Is it that I’m not white enough? Am I not the shape? The height? Because I’m not petite? Do I not seem like I’m worth being treated like a woman?”
As she grinds away on her upcoming album, Megan said she tries to keep her head up and not let any of the haters see her cry, especially Lanez. “‘I feel like you’ve already tried to break me enough. You’ve already shot me,” she said of her alleged assailant. “So, why are you dragging it out like this? Like, what else? Have you hated me this much the whole time and I didn’t see it?’”
As for what she wants to see when the trial opens in Sept., Megan said she would like to see Lanez go to jail. “I want him to go under the jail.”
