When Megan Thee Stallion dropped off her third studio album, Megan, in August, the 18 tracks sought to cater to every type of Hottie. The Anime-loving fans indulged in playfully specific songs like “Otaku Hot Girl” and the Hot 100 hit “Mamushi” with Yuki Chiba. The album’s serpentine-themed tracks like “Hiss,” “Rattle,” and “Cobra” all jabbed at her critics and gratified her “Real Hot Girl S**t” supporters, while party anthems like “Where Them Girls At” aimed to heat the club up. Meg saw the fruits of her labor, with the album debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 last June.
So when Megan announced her follow-up album Megan: Act II last week, the album’s glossy and blinged-out cover — reminiscent of Juvenile’s 400 Degreez — the message was clear. This album would be for her Houston Hotties and tap into her southern roots in a way Megan’s mainstream commercialization didn’t. While not all of the 13 new songs touch on Meg’s southern background (there are features from metal band Skybox, BTS’ RM, and K-Pop group TWICE), there’s enough spice to satisfy.
“I really like to rap,” Megan told Billboard in her cover story last month. “Where I come from, people are really freestyling. What I come from is hardcore rap, Southern rap. The one thing in my life that I knew I was really good at was rapping. I don’t ever want to get away from that. I don’t ever want to play with it. I don’t ever want people to think I don’t take it seriously. I’ll be the rapper that is good for a bunch of verses and freestyles because that’s what I like to do.”
Check out Billboard‘s thoughts on every song that appears on Megan Thee Stallion’s Megan: Act II in our ranked list below.
