Jun 21, 2022

Written by Mankaprr Conteh For Rolling Stone's July/August Cover: Megan Thee Stallion

Introducing The Cover Star of Rolling Stone's July/August Hot Issue, Megan Thee Stallion

In just a few years, Megan Jovon Ruth Pete has gone from rapping at Houston kickbacks and strip clubs to becoming one of the biggest new superstars in music, assembling a legion of fans she’s dubbed Thee Hotties. Along the way, in March 2019, she lost her mother — a Houston rapper known as Holly-Wood, who raised Megan on UGK and Biggie, and later became her manager — to brain cancer, then lost her great-grandmother just two weeks later. (Megan’s father, Joseph Pete Jr., was incarcerated for the first eight years of her life; after he got home, he and Megan were attached at the hip until he died when she was 15.)

Those losses left Megan, now 27, without the people she trusted most as she navigated skyrocketing fame, graduated from Texas Southern University (with a bachelor’s degree in health administration), and, most shockingly, endured a July 2020 shooting allegedly at the hands of Tory Lanez, a recording artist and former friend. She survived, but has been locked in a contentious battle in court — and the court of public opinion — ever since.

“I’m trying every day to get through it and be good. I feel so bad because I don’t feel like anybody’s taking me seriously, but I don’t want them to see me cry. I don’t want them to know that I feel like this, because I don’t want them to feel like, ‘Oh, I got you. I’m breaking you.’”

— Megan Thee Stallion

Click Here To Read The entire Cover Story

Writer: Mankaprr Conteh

Mankaprr Conteh is a staff writer at Rolling Stone, where she primarily covers hip-hop, R&B, African pop music, and occasionally comedians.

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Photographer: Ramona Rosales

Ramona Rosales received a BFA from Art Center College of Design. Known for her candid, offbeat portraits of celebrities, her work appears regularly in numerous publications including The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard Magazine, and New York Times Magazine. Her work has been exhibited in the US and Mexico. She is based in Los Angeles.