Although she’s not revealing any dates, Megan Thee Stallion is warning the Hotties that they have to “be on point” for when her new music drops.
While speaking with ET about her new collaboration with Frito-Lay’s Flamin’ Hot — Flamin’ Hot University aka F.U., aimed to help fans “Unleash their Flamin’ Hot” with online courses and a limited-edition merch collection that funds scholarships for HBCU students — the 28-year-old rapper opened up about getting into the right mindset to release new music and preparing for her feature film debut.
“I like to surprise the Hotties, so I’m not gonna say how soon, but just be expecting it,” the GRAMMY winner says when ET’s Rachel Smith asks her when fans can expect her previously teased new music to be released. “Everybody knows spooky season is my favorite season, so just be on point.”
Megan got fans excited when she told ET at Vanity Fair‘s star-studded Oscars after-party earlier this year that she has been working on new music and they can expect “a new album” from her, following on the heels of her 2022 release, Traumazine.
It was the rapper’s first appearance in months as she had remained out of the public eye since testifying against former friend Tory Lanez during his felony assault trial in December. After a week-long trial, the Canadian musician was convicted on three counts at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles. On Aug. 8, three years after Megan accused the Canadian of shooting her in the feet, Lanez was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In an interview with InStyle published in May, Megan shared that her fans will have to wait for new music because she was focused on “healing.”
“Fans can expect new music when I’m in a better place. Right now, I’m focused on healing,” she told the outlet. “The music and entertainment industry can be a grind, so it’s important to take time off and avoid burning out. Life is all about balance.”
Since then, the rapper has opened up about her healing journey, taking to her Instagram page to share photos and videos of her spending time with her dogs, working out, bingeing TV shows, and finding new ways to protect her peace. It’s helped her get to a place where she’s excited to share her work with her fans.
“I feel like I’m in such a fresh space, like everything about me is new,” Megan tells ET. “My attitude, my vibe. I feel like I’m starting a new chapter in my life. I think I’ve just gone through so much and I’m at a point where I don’t care about a lot of stuff. I’m just so comfortable with myself. I’m like, ‘OK, at this point, girl, what’s the worst thing that can happen?’ I’m just into taking risks right now.”
Explaining that she’s taken all social media apps off her phone, Megan says doing so has kept her from feeling pressured by the work of other musical artists.
“I don’t have any inspiration from anybody out right now [because] I feel like as an artist, you see other artists doing things and it’s like, ‘Oh my god, I got to keep up,'” she adds. “I have no clue what anybody’s doing, so the music that I been making, it feels good to me.”
It was far from an easy journey for the Houston-raised GRAMMY winner.
“I always like to think of myself as a confident person, I always [act] that I didn’t care about much, I was nonchalant, but it took me to go through things where so many people were talking about me constantly, to where I had to realize, ‘OK, maybe you’re not as nonchalant and carefree as you thought you were,'” she confesses. “So, I had to take a step back [and] reevaluate myself. I had to get in a comfortable position with myself, and now I genuinely can say that I’m in love with Megan. I’m in love with Megan Thee Stallion.”
It’s clear that Megan is in a good place musically as well; the rapper shocked fans earlier this month when she and Cardi B came together for another eargasmic collaboration.
Cardi dropped “Bongos” at midnight on Sept. 8, releasing the provocative single with a colorful music video directed by Tanu Muino. The stunning visual is as vibrant and mind-bending as fans have come to expect from the Bronx native, featuring dancers draped in a spectrum of colors, half-naked male models in Speedos and more. At one point, Cardi and Megan join their dancers in an elaborate dance, dressed in custom Michael Costello bodysuits.
The video backdrop is the stunning Spanish-style mansion known as the Beverly Estate, previously featured in films such as The Godfather and The Bodyguard, as well as Beyoncé’s visual album, Black Is King.
Fans have been waiting for the duo to reunite since they teased another collaboration while celebrating the year anniversary of their history-making single, “WAP.”
According to a recent interview with Hot 97, the song had been in the works for a while. “This song has been part of a plan for a minute now,” Cardi explained, mentioning that even before Megan’s verses were added to the track, she had a vision of her being on it. “It’s just one of those records where you need somebody. And even on those parts, where she’s at, I did verses to it, but then it just feels like a long ass song.”
She added: “She always sends verses and I chop it up and it just goes really well. She’s my work wife.”
In a YouTube livestream conversation between Megan and Cardi before the video’s premiere, Megan recalled, “I was so happy when I got the song because it doesn’t sound like anything that’s out right now, and I feel like it definitely challenged me to rap in a different way. ‘Cause I never rapped over a beat like this before, and I was like, ‘Oh, OK, she want me to go put my foot in this b**ch. OK, I can do that for her. She want me to work for it, OK, here we go.'”
The rapper also shared, as a “side note, outside of music,” why she was excited to work with the 30-year-old rapper again.
“For me as a person, I don’t really — this space that I’m in mentally, I’m not like fooling with too many people that don’t give me good vibes, good energy,” she confessed. “I have literally created boundaries. And Cardi is somebody that I want in my space, in my energy. … She been nothing but real to me. Like, the industry is so f**ked up, but this girl is probably the only girl who have been this consistent and this real, and this — this just great of a person to me.”
The rapper shares a similar sentiment when speaking with ET about her “work wife.”
“I feel like we hype each other up so well, like anytime she might be feeling a way, I’m definitely her sunshine cloud,” Megan says, adding that she’s always ready to jump in for the mom of two whenever she needs her to tag in.
“She’s so sweet and she’s so kind and that’s why I really like her ’cause she’s real. You don’t really run across a lot of raw people, whatever comes to her mind first, that’s what she’s saying, that’s how she feels. So I never walk away [wondering], ‘Did she mean that?’ No, ’cause if she thought it, she said it, and she meant it. So I absolutely love that about her.”
Music isn’t the only new platform fans will get to see Megan dominate. The rapper is making her film debut in A24’s upcoming musical comedy film, Dicks: The Musical.
Directed by Borat filmmaker Larry Charles and starring and written by Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp, the film received a SAG-AFTRA Interim Agreement 36 hours before its world premiere at TIFF last week, which clears the way for Megan to gush about her upcoming project.
The film follows two fiercely competitive salesmen (Sharp and Jackson) who discover that they’re twins, after separately being raised by their mother (Megan Mullally) and gay father (Nathan Lane). The duo tries to get their parents back together.
“I love like that campy, funny, inappropriate kind of vibe,” Megan tells ET about the film, in which she stars as the twins’ ruthless boss. “Josh and Aaron — they sold it to me like, they’re such a crazy team. Being on that set, it felt like I was working with all my friends. The dancers were so good [and] the production was so nice. Everybody was too good!”
A24 confirmed that they plan on submitting the movie for Oscar consideration, which means Megan’s featured song on the film’s soundtrack — a rap and dance number featured in the film’s trailer and titled “Out-Alpha the Alpha” — could score the rapper an Oscar win.
The rapper admits that she aspires to become an EGOT, and with the GRAMMY already taken care of, she is manifesting the O. “Megan Thee Stallion, the Oscar winner,” she gleefully proclaims.
The rapper is even more excited to share her new partnership with Frito-Lay’s Flamin’ Hot.
The GRAMMY winner has teamed up with the snack brand to introduce Flamin’ Hot University, an online university working to encourage students to embrace the spicy, rebellious spirit of the brand, and learn to “Unleash their Flamin’ Hot” lives in full flavor. F.U. offers short, snackable courses on food, fashion and lifestyle.
Not only did the rapper give her hottie stamp of approval to an exclusive line of F.U. merchandise created by streetwear designer Melody Ehsani, but 100 percent of proceeds from the merchandise collection will go toward establishing a scholarship fund at Texas Southern University (TSU), Megan’s Houston-based HBCU alma mater. The scholarship fund will help select graduating seniors at TSU say “FU” to student loan debt and start off on the right foot.
“Everybody knows that I love hot chips, that’s my favorite thing…,” Megan says of the Flamin’ Hot. “And everybody knows that I love education. I got my degree [and] I feel like you’re never too old to learn. I can show the girls that you can still turn up, have a good time, be a hot girl, and you can still wake up and go to class. We got to do that like, I got to endorse that message.”
She adds: “You will learn how to be a hottie, you will learn how to authentically be yourself and you will learn all the bomb Flamin’ Hot recipes that you’ll probably be making in your dorm room at 2 a.m.”
Megan earned her bachelor’s degree in health administration back in December 2021. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who spoke at the graduation ceremony for the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Texas Southern University, announced the rapper also received the 18th Congressional District Humanitarian Award. The award recognizes “outstanding public achievements by the people who live in the 18th Congressional district.”
A year before, Megan talked with ET about working on her degree in health administration.
The rapper said her late mother, Holly Pete, who died in March 2019 after a battle with brain cancer, inspired her to finish her education. Megan’s goal is to one day open up her own assisted living facility. The “Body” rapper also has a scholarship fund program in partnership with Amazon Music. The program awards $10,000 to two women of color pursuing an associates, bachelors or post-graduate degree.
With her Flamin’ Hot partnership, Megan furthers her efforts to help people have it all when it comes to their education and living their best life.
In addition to the merch-funded TSU scholarship, Flamin’ Hot will make a separate contribution to the Pete and Thomas Foundation, the non-profit organization that Megan launched in 2022 that focuses on uplifting and assisting women, children, senior citizens and underserved communities in Houston, Texas, and across the world. The organization focuses on three core sectors — education, housing, health and wellness — and is committed to supporting mission-aligned non-profit organizations, generating awareness around key campaigns and spearheading its owned and operated activities.
Reminiscing on her college experience, Megan tells ET that she understands what it means to be “a struggling college student.”
“I know one of the main struggles that make people want to just give up and quit is being able to pay for school. That was one of my biggest things when I first got there,” she shares. “My mom told me, ‘I’m not helping you pay for this.’ My grandma was doing the best she could and I was like, ‘Dang, what am I gonna do?’ Fortunately enough for me, I became Megan Thee Stallion, so [the] first money I ever got, I spent it on college! I paid off my school.”
Saying that she “always knew” she wanted to get her degree and be a rapper, Megan says that juggling her career and her education was always Plan A. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, if this doesn’t work I’m gonna do that.’ It was always like, ‘No, girl, both of [these are] gonna work, so stick with it. We got something to prove.’ And we did it.”
Potential students can visit FlaminHotUniversity.com and follow Flamin’ Hot on social media to take part in F.U. courses and view exclusive content.
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