Megan Thee Stallion Slows Down for No One on "Fever"

Drew Brees Exemplifies How NOT to Be a White Ally

Megan Thee Stallion Slows Down for No One on New Album "Fever"

The Houston rapper's breakout project has been a long time coming, and her technical prowess and powerful charisma make Fever a fun and invigorating showcase of her talent.

Megan Thee Stallion at Rolling Loud Festival

Sage Pacetti

Megan Thee Stallion's rise has been thrilling to watch.

The Houston rapper released three rollicking mixtapes, Rich Ratchet, Make It Hot, and Tina Snow, in the span of three years, gaining notoriety for her prodigious flow and charisma. She's been dropping freestyles all of 2019, spitting gems for the likes of DJ QuinnRaynor and Fire in the Booth. She's cultivated a devoted fanbase who rally to her raunchy bars and assertive performance. And now she's released Fever, her newest project, and it feels like a prophecy has been fulfilled. Fever is meant for shaking the walls of a house party with relentless trap beats and Megan's commanding voice.

It's fun to hear just how much Megan is in control on Fever. It's an admirably functional mixtape, bottling her appeal into a tight forty minutes that showcases the best parts of her Hot Girl Meg persona. She's credited with writing every song on the album, and you can hear that authorship in every rhyme that rolls off her tongue. She's unbothered on "Realer," coolly flexing on "Cash Shit," and ferociously sneering on "W.A.B." Megan mixes her sexual agency and her burgeoning success as proof of her own power, charging up her fearless performance with a natural ease. Her technical prowess fuels that presence, her bars taking flight over the dynamic production, especially on her tracks with producer LilJuMadeDaBeat. There's a disarming and genuine sweetness on the loving "Best You Ever Had" and "Bring Drank," while "Shake That" and "Ratchet" are the standouts on the second half of a track list dominated by bass-heavy club bangers. And Megan still manages to inject moments of wild levity, with priceless Spongebob references on "Running Up Freestyle" and on "Simon Says," as she narrates her and her posse robbing an unsuspecting male. DaBaby and Juicy J do what they can on their features, bringing their own nastiness, but they can't match Megan's raw star power. It's never anything less than her show.

At this point in her still-young career, a project doesn't need to be more than what it is, and Fever is delirious fun. It's Megan making the argument that her style — uncompromisingly hard and arrestingly confident — deserves to take up room in the modern rap landscape. It's the soundtrack to a summer of putting trifling men in their place and conquering the dance floor. "When you hear my fucking name / Know they speaking on a champ," she raps on "Pimpin," punching out space for herself with the force of a speeding train. Megan Thee Stallion's arrival is undeniable. Miss it at your own risk.

Fever

Is Carole Baskin Inheriting a Haunted "Indian" Burial Ground with Tiger King Zoo?

Current owner Jeff Lowe claims there are bodies, including "a young American Indian boy," buried on the property

It was recently reported that Carole Baskin had been awarded the property of the Tiger King Zoo—formerly the G.W. Zoo—in Wynnewood, Oklahoma after a judgment found in her favor.

As fans of the Netflix docuseries Tiger King will know, her long-standing legal feud with Joe Exotic (AKA Joseph Maldonado-Passage, né Shreibvogel) over his violation of the Big Cat Rescue trademark resulted in a million dollar settlement in her favor. But for the most part Exotic managed to dodge paying Baskin through a series of illegal property transfers that temporarily protected his animal park from seizure.

Now that Exotic is in prison for attempting to have Baskin murdered—along with illegal animal trafficking and several violations of the Endangered Species Act—a judge has finally ruled that the park is hers, and she will be taking over ownership of the 16-acre property later this year. But Jeff Lowe—the park's current owner and the personification of a mid-life crisis—insists that there are no hard feelings, saying, "She deserves this property."

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Music Features

On This Day: Aretha Franklin's "Respect" Is More Important Than Ever

The singers magnetic hit, which debuted at No. 1 on this day in 1967, still fiercely resonates

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On this day in 1967, Aretha Franklin's "Respect" debuted at No.1 on the U.S. charts. The Otis Redding re-imagining would become the definitive song of the 1960's Civil Rights and Feminist Movements.

At just 24-years-old, the soon-to-be Queen of Soul took a song that was a desperate plea for companionship and transformed it into a cutthroat demand for equality. "Come to me for I'm begging, come to me for I'm begging, darling," Redding howls in his version. "Your kisses, sweeter than honey," Franklin croons on her re-imagining almost in direct response. "And guess what? So is my money." When Franklin's version continued to grow in popularity, Redding felt both emasculated and proud. "The next song is a song that a girl took away from me. A good friend of mine." Redding said playfully before diving into his rendition during his 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival.

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