The Rebirth Of Megan Thee Stallion

With her third album on the way, hip-hop’s it girl is in her strongest era yet. Here, the Grammy-winning rapper reveals how she quiets the noise of haters, hypes herself up, and embraces a revamped approach to health and wellness.

BY JESSICA HERNDON

Megan Thee Stallion has changed.

She’s a new woman—head to toe—thanks to a period of transformation, which included learning how to become the ultimate hype woman for herself.

The proof is in the clips of her workouts she posts on social media: She delivers fast-talking, hilarious voice-over about powering through booty-burning donkey kicks by renaming them “stallion kicks” and declaring thigh work with resistance bands worth it because “my thighs look good as f*ck!” Known for keeping it real and raw—especially when it comes to her ratchet bars—the aptly named Thee Hot Girl Coach and Mother Fitness is the baddie giving I’ve-got-this energy.

Megan, 29, playfully tosses strands of blonde hair out of her face as she declares to me of her ability to incite inspo, “I’m that girl.” But let’s be honest: “Getting out of bed to work out in the morning is a struggle,” she says. “I have to get mentally prepared. I’m like, ‘I can stay here for another hour, or I can get up and go work out and be a bad bitch. If I want to be a stallion and not a pony, I got to get up and put in the work.’”

This dedicated grind has played a massive part in her becoming an undeniable force in music and entertainment. Going from playing small gigs in Houston in the mid-2010s to dominating the charts with No. 1 hits like “Body” and the Grammy-winning “Savage Remix” with Beyoncé, Megan (born Megan Pete) has secured her spot as hip-hop’s hot girl. And with her third album on the way via her imprint Hot Girl Productions—and more acting roles on the horizon after appearing in the movie Dicks: The Musical and the TV show P-Valley—she’s showing no signs of slowing down. “I always feel like, ‘I got to do something better,’” Megan says of her drive. “I can’t be stuck. I can’t be stagnant.”

A few years ago, however, static is exactly how she felt. In July 2020, Megan was shot by rapper and former friend Tory Lanez after leaving a Hollywood Hills party together. The shooting, for which Tory was found guilty in December 2022, left Megan bloodied, unable to walk, and with bullet fragments in her feet.

Over time, she healed physically, but mentally, she suffered. “A lot of people didn’t treat me like I was human for a long time,” says Megan, who endured an immense amount of hate from fellow artists, strangers, and bloggers who questioned her recollection of the experience. “I feel like everybody was always used to me being the fun and happy party girl. I watched people build me up, tear me down, and be confused about their expectations of me. As a Black woman, as a darker Black woman, I also feel like people expect me to take the punches, take the beating, take the lashings, and handle it with grace. But I’m human.”

She suppressed her true feelings for a while, appearing to love every moment of superstardom. But as Megan’s career continued to heat up—her raunchy collab “W.A.P.” with Cardi B. became the first female rap duet to debut at the top of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in August 2020—so did her behind-the-scenes struggle. “Before I went onstage, I would be crying half the time because I didn’t want to [perform], but I also didn’t want to upset my fans,” Megan says. The weight of her emotions eventually caught up with her, leading to what she calls “dark times.” “I didn’t want to get [out] from under the covers,” she says, tears building in her eyes. “I stayed in my room. I would not turn the lights on. I had blackout curtains. I didn’t want to see the sun. I knew I wasn’t myself. It took me a while to acknowledge that I was depressed. But once I started talking to a therapist, I was able to be truthful with myself.”

Therapy was just the beginning of Megan’s healing. She also ended relationships that no longer served her and deleted social media from her phone to avoid trolls and doomscrolling. Then she was inspired to move her body as she started mending her soul. “Working on myself made me get into working out because I needed to focus my energy somewhere else,” she says. “I used working out to escape and to get happy.” Now, she gets physical regularly.

Four or five days a week, Megan sweats it out in Pilates class, at the gym, or at the beach with one of her two trainers, Emory “Joc” Bernard and Tim Boutte. For cardio, she runs up sand hills at the beach or spends 40 minutes on the StairMaster or elliptical. When targeting her legs and thighs, she does hip thrusts, goblet squats, leg extensions, and those “stallion kicks.” Weighted situps work her abs, and lat pulldowns, lat flies, and renegade rows strengthen her back.

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