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  • Nicki Minaj Is All Over Megan Thee Stallion’s Latest Song…Without Being an Actual Feature, Or: Megan Thee Stallion Continues Her Cobra Motif With “Hiss”

    Nicki Minaj Is All Over Megan Thee Stallion’s Latest Song…Without Being an Actual Feature, Or: Megan Thee Stallion Continues Her Cobra Motif With “Hiss”

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    After joining in for a feature on “new queen bee” (not) Reneé Rapp’s “Not My Fault,” some listeners might have been misled into thinking Megan Thee Stallion had gone soft. But her new pattern of single releases seems to be “hard, soft, hard,” if we’re going by “Cobra,” “Not My Fault” and, now, “Hiss.” The latter obviously being thematically  in line with “Cobra” based on the title alone. And yet, the “snake” Megan Thee Stallion has in mind as inspiration for this song is one, Nicki Minaj. While some might have been foolish enough to believe that there was harmony between the two rappers after they collaborated on 2019’s hit of the summer, “Hot Girl Summer,” there is often a pattern with Nicki when it comes to alienating the female rappers who have come up after her. Especially the ones she’s willing to collaborate with at the outset of their careers. Once upon a time, that was Cardi B, who quickly turned from “friend” to foe after 2017’s “MotorSport.” A song that Cardi was added to later in the creation process, and that Minaj felt she should have been more grateful for. 

    By 2018, the two famously got into a scuffle at an event for New York Fashion Week, prompting Cardi to release a series of videos in the aftermath defending herself and more fully speaking on their beef with comments like, “You lie so much you can’t even keep up with lies.” It seems Megan Thee Stallion, who collaborated with Cardi one year after “Hot Girl Summer” on “WAP” (and then again on 2023’s “Bongos”), would tend to agree. Along with the many venomous (snake pun intended) outcries about how Minaj is both enabling and defending a sexual predator. Which brings us to the most scandalizing (for Nicki and beef-lovers alike) line of all from “Hiss”: “These hoes don’t be mad at Megan, these hoes mad at Megan’s Law.” A direct aim and hit at Nicki for her husband, Kenneth Petty, not registering as a sex offender upon moving to California in order to be with her. This deliberate failure on his part was considered a federal offense. Thus, he was sentenced with three years of probation and one year of house arrest. Plus a $55,000 fine that Minaj undoubtedly paid.

    Thee Stallion’s shade-throwing might seem like a non sequitur to some, but hints of contention have been publicly brewing at least since Minaj’s 2023 single, “Red Ruby Da Sleeze,” on which she raps, “I don’t fuck with horses since Christopher Reeve.” Stallion, horses…you get it. To cinch the allusion, Minaj also added, “Dorito bitches mad that they not chose.” Megan, as it happens, has an endorsement deal with Doritos (and all the other Flamin’ Hot products in the Frito Lay stable). So, not exactly subtle. Thus, Megan meets that “subtlety” and raises it on “Hiss.” Which is why she comes for Minaj’s “okayness” with sex offenders (including her brother, Jelani Maraj). She makes no mention, however, of Minaj’s beef with her stemming from, per Minaj’s account, the time Megan told her to drink alcohol while pregnant and get an abortion so she could really have a good time. It seems Minaj sat on that for a while and decided it was wildly inappropriate, even if said in jest (and probably because Thee Stallion didn’t want her to have a sex offender’s baby…so, if you think about it, it was coming from an inherently good place). Hence, “Red Ruby Da Sleeze.” But Minaj didn’t seem to bargain for Megan Thee Stallion actually lying in wait (like a cobra) to pounce when the time was right. And oh, how it was right for poking the bear that is Minaj’s furor on social media once she gets started. But all of that attention she gave Megan only worked to the latter’s advantage, with the video for “Hiss” becoming the number one trending video on YouTube the day after its release. Having warned us that she’s the “Black Regina George,” Thee Stallion dropped the equivalent of every page (photocopied ad infinitum) in the Burn Book into the public space with this song and video. 

    Directed by Douglas Bernardt (who also did “Cobra”), the video opens on a snake’s egg hatching (just as the video for “Cobra” ended on the image of one hatching). And who else should be inside of it but Megan herself? As we see her float inside the amniotic fluid, Megan paints the picture, “I feel like Mariah Carey/Got these niggas so obsessed/My pussy so famous, might get managed by Kris Jenner next/He can’t move on, can’t let it go/He hooked nose full of that Tina Snow/And since niggas need Megan help to make money/Bitch, come be my ho.” Invoking Mariah’s name from the outset was already an immediate dig at Nicki, who famously had beef with Mariah during the filming of American Idol starting in 2012. Though, just two years before, the sparring duo came together for a remix of a Mariah song called “Up Out My Face.” Released even before Minaj’s debut album, Pink Friday, it established the fact that “Barbie” was rising to the top as fast as some of her current competitors are now. This includes Ice Spice, who is theoretically “Team Nicki” after collaborating on “Princess Diana” and “Barbie World” with her. Though she might find herself eventually in a war with Nicki too, if we’re to go by the pattern of Cardi and Megan, both of whom Nicki collab’d with at the beginning of their mainstream musical journeys as well. But back to Mariah, who is strategically mentioned by Megan as an allusion to another feud and to make a callback to Carey’s 2009 single, “Obsessed,” which took shots at Eminem (both in the song and its accompanying music video). A rapper who would appear alongside Nicki on Pink Friday with “Roman’s Revenge.” How…circular. At least when it comes to making correlations based on “Hiss.”

    And Thee Stallion also wants the correlation to be made that she’s still talking about Nicki (by referencing “Hot Girl Summer”) during one of the final verses when she raps, “Ever since I claimed the summer, all you bitches want a season/Ask a ho why she don’t like me, bet she can’t give you a reason.” But if Minaj didn’t have one before, she certainly has one now…and will no doubt be using this as cannon fodder in the future. Not just for attacking her, but also her “known associates.” Namely, Drake. Who gets majorly trolled by Megan in the verse, “All these lil’ rap niggas so fraud [perhaps a nod to the Nicki/Drake song “No Frauds”]/Xanax be they hardest bars/These niggas hate on BBLs and be walkin’ ’round with the same scars…/Cosplay gangsters, fake-ass accents/Posted in another nigga hood like a bad bitch (where are you from?).” So, essentially, she came for most of the Young Money alumni (except Lil’ Wayne). As per usual, Thee Stallion also talks about how the more people speak negatively about her, the richer she’ll get. This was addressed on Traumazine’s “Her” with, “The more hoes hating, more money I’ma make/And the more niggas talk, more niggas want a taste.” On “Hiss,” it becomes, “Bottom line is I’m still rich” and “Every time I get mentioned, one of y’all bitch-ass niggas get twenty-four hours of attention.”

    This includes Minaj, who is currently getting more than just twenty-four hours of it as she keeps going off on social media while Thee Stallion has let the work do all the talking. Though one imagines Minaj won’t wait too long to deliver a better rebuttal than the one she gave with, “Bad bitch, she like six foot/I call her Big Foot/ The bitch fell off, I said get up on your good foot.” And maybe part of Minaj’s response will also be to the Cardi-delivered line on “Bongos” that goes, “My BD is a Migo/Bitch, your BD is a zero.” Which, yes, could even be interpreted as a dig at Minaj’s baby daddy (turned husband) selection.

    As for Thee Stallion, she concludes “Hiss” by strutting down a stark white catwalk with a pit of snakes slithering on either side. By now, though, she’s prepared to bite back with her own distinct venom. Though there are some very specific moments during the video when she channels the Minaj aesthetic while doing it. Particularly just before opening an Alice in Wonderland-type door into a hall of mirrors where she can say to one version of herself, “Y’all goofy-ass niggas look so dumb after y’all celebrate fake news/Usin’ my name for likes and views/I don’t give a fuck what y’all make trend/Bitch, I still win.” It seems that’s the case for this round of the biftek between the two rap powerhouses (because if anyone knows Minaj, this isn’t going to stop now). So maybe Thee Stallion might be the first to prove that imitation isn’t the sincerest form of flattery…not when the person doing it also happens to be dragging your name through the mud in the process.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Less Phallic, More Spiritual: Megan Thee Stallion’s “Cobra”

    Less Phallic, More Spiritual: Megan Thee Stallion’s “Cobra”

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    While one might automatically assume that a song called “Cobra,” coming from Megan Thee Stallion, would be inherently innuendo-laden (it was, after all, in “WAP” that Cardi B declared, “I need a king cobra”), in the end, the rapper’s latest single is more spiritual than sexual. Because, lest anyone forget, the cobra is known just as much for being able to shed its skin as it is for its phallic nature. 

    So it is that the Douglas Bernardt-directed video begins with a circular close-up on Megan Thee Stallion’s mouth (with the entire rest of the screen in black) as she informs us, “Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.” Amen. Soon after, the camera zooms out to show Thee Stallion with snake eyes. Bernardt then cuts to a very birth-like scene (you know, think: emerging from ya ma’s vaginal canal) of Megan, practically in her birthday suit, crawling out of the snake’s mouth. After making her way out into the wilderness-y milieu, another snake awaits as the rock-oriented (by rap standards) beat drops and Thee Stallion commences her tale of woe and overcoming it with the lyrics, “Breakin’ down and I had the whole world watchin’/But the worst part is really who watched me/Every night I cried, I almost died/And nobody close tried to stop it/Long as everybody gettin’ paid, right?/Everything’ll be okay, right?”

    Surely, these are lines that Britney Spears can relate to. In addition to, “I’m winnin’, so nobody trippin’/Bet if I ever fall off, everybody go missin’.” Indeed, part of Spears’ big “fuck you” to the many who wronged her, particularly her family, is to shirk the music industry altogether at this point (with rumors still swirling that she’s due to “return” any day now). So if Megan ever wants to take the same approach, she knows who to look to for inspiration. At the same time, Spears has shown her cobra-like strength by shedding the trauma of her own past and still “daring” to interface with the public at all (mostly on Instagram). And, besides, this is the same girl who iconically draped a snake around her shoulders while shimmying to “I’m A Slave 4 U” at the 2001 VMAs. The snake metaphor has long been in her wheelhouse (much to Taylor Swift’s dismay).

    As for the moody guitar rhythm of “Cobra,” brought to listeners by Bankroll Got It, Shawn “Source” Jarrett and Derrick Milano, it reminds one of ANTI-era Rihanna—namely the sixth track on the album, “Woo” (co-produced by Hit-Boy, Kuk Harrell and, yes, Travis Scott). But the visuals themselves are pure Nicki Minaj (complete with a similar state of undress) in the video for 2018’s “Ganja Burn,” off the Queen album. And, like “Cobra,” “Ganja Burn” also offers a prologue, this one written (instead of spoken) as follows:

    Once upon a time, in a world unknown… there lived a queen. The generous queen. One day, her enemies all came together to hold a secret meeting and concocted a plan to take the generous queen down. They conspired with someone who was once very close to her & struck like a thief in the night. Though the queen could hear & see them in her mind, she decided to allow them an easy victory. She advised her army to do & say nothing. They slaughtered her village. What they perceived as death was a deep sleep. Once the generous queen had enough of her rest, she began to arise as she blew life back into her army. They all assembled, stronger & better than ever. They became more protective of the queen than ever before. She made a command. One command. ‘Kill everything in sight.’ With those words, her enemies were all put to death. The queen’s empire celebrated. They asked her, ‘Why did you allow us to be defeated?’ She responded, ‘So that generations for years & years to come would know, that even in the grave, he is lord.

    Megan Thee Stallion wants to convey a similar message to her own enemies, with especial focus on the man who caused so much of her suicide ideation for the past few years, Tory Lanez. It is he that The Stallion refers to when she provides the aforementioned rap, “Breakin’ down and I had the whole world watchin’/But the worst part is really who watched me/Every night I cried, I almost died.” And yet, despite understanding the preciousness of life after her near-death experience, Megan still can’t help feeling “very depressed.” We’re talking wrist-slittingly depressed.

    Addressing the conundrum of being rich and successful, yet still feeling empty inside (to bring up Britney again, she already explored that pain with 2000’s “Lucky”), Megan sings, “How can somebody so blessed wanna slit they wrist?/Shit, I’d probably bleed out some Pinot/When they find me, I’m in Valentino, ayy.” Needless to say, the expensive wines and the designer labels aren’t enough to fill an emotional and spiritual void. Which means, like Britney in 2003, maybe it’s time for Megan to seek Kabbalah counsel from Madonna, who once told her dancers that after their tour (2004’s Reinvention Tour, to be exact), she hoped they had become “more compassionate to other human beings and more responsible for your actions and your words, because without those two things your gifts and your talents mean nothing.”

    Perhaps Thee Stallion is starting to pick up on that message, even if still allowing herself to wallow in her melancholia just a little bit longer. During the chorus, she speaks to that sadness on a new level, channeling Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) in the vulvodynia episode of Sex and the City (“The Real Me”) when she says, “This pussy deprеssed, hmm/I’m about to stress him, yeah.” This is said while Megan is in a human-sized tank meant to mirror the kind that “pet” cobras and other snakes are usually kept in, all while strangers watch her and take her picture. Thus, she takes Taylor Swift’s “fishbowl” metaphor from the “Lover” video and remakes it with a snake tank. For that’s what it is to be famous: trapped inside a glass prison with everyone on the outside examining and dissecting your every move. Inside the tank, Megan peels off another layer of skin from her face. 

    Intercut scenes in black and white then start to show up, featuring Megan in her most Nicki-looking aesthetic yet. A smattering of heads contained inside a sea of snakes also serves to highlight Thee Stallion’s overarching message that she will always triumph over her enemies, hitting back when they least expect it with her own set of venomous fangs. Dancing in the middle of a spiral jetty during the mercurial guitar solo (at its most “80s rock” yet), Thee Stallion again gives off major “Ganja Burn” video vibes. Soon, a montage of images that we’ve seen throughout the video play at a rapid-fire pace before the camera finally pauses on Thee Stallion’s face looking back at us, her back arched and her breathing visible. It is in this moment that the viewer can understand the full weight of her focus on the cobra as a spirit animal. For it is she who posted an image relating to the cobra’s symbolic meaning that stated, “Cobras exemplify courage and self-reliance. They stand tall and fierce in the face of challenges, teaching one to tap into their inner strength and rely on oneself to conquer their threats. Emulating the cobra helps one be more confident in the person they are within.”

    How fitting, then, that “Cobra” should serve as the first single from Megan’s Hot Girl label. Part of a larger company called Hot Girl Productions LLC—and secured after years of legal battles with 1501 Certified Entertainment—it’s no coincidence that her first release since 2022’s Traumazine is a marked departure from the sound of previous music. Not just the melding of rap and rock (of the variety perhaps not seen since Run DMC and Aerosmith joined forces), but with the amplification of her deeply personal lyrics. The kind of lyrics that are generally not associated with being “rap topics” (because that can only extend to repetitive mentions of bands and booties, n’est-ce pas?).

    This includes exposing further vulnerability by alluding to her breakup with Pardison Fontaine, as she refers to his infidelity via the lines, “Pulled up, caught him cheatin’/Gettin’ his dick sucked in the same spot I’m sleepin’.” Here, again, it’s worth remarking that Minaj was the mainstream’s progenitor of these kinds of deeply personal lyrics in her rap music, with notable examples including The Pinkprint’s “I Lied,” “The Crying Game” and “Pills n Potions.” With “Cobra,” Megan Thee Stallion is amplifying the “vulnerability in rap” trend that Minaj started a decade ago and making it all her own.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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