It is easy for a public image to become something other people start defining for you, especially when fame arrives while you are still figuring out who you are. During a new appearance on Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson’s IMO podcast, Megan Thee Stallion spoke about that pressure through the lens of women’s empowerment, saying women can sometimes ‘let other people build your personality’ before they have fully established it for themselves.
That tension runs through much of the conversation. The confidence attached to Megan Thee Stallion has become inseparable from her career, but she described living inside that image as far less steady than it looks from the outside. She said that those moments also force her to recognize how much she has to be grateful for. Across the interview, that push and pull surfaced repeatedly as she looked back at the family that raised her, the grief she had to navigate in public, and the business lessons that changed how she approaches her career. She also offered an early look at what comes next musically, including the return of Tina Snow for her still-developing Megan: Act III era.
The version of Megan that audiences see is often built around confidence, but she made clear that confidence does not cancel out exhaustion. There are days she feels fully in control, but sometimes, the constant attention becomes something she wants to escape completely. “Being me, it’s a rollercoaster. Like, some days I feel like, ‘Yes, hell yeah.’ But then some days, I feel like I need to go get under my bed. I don’t want to see anybody. I don’t want anybody to see me. I’m so tired. I’m tired of people talking about me, I’m just tired.” She said those moments often require her to pull herself out of that headspace by remembering the position she is in and the opportunities her career has given her. “But then, I have to take a step back and realize I’m very blessed.”
Home came up often as Megan talked about the people who raised her before music became a career. Growing up on Houston’s Southside, she spent her earliest years in a household led largely by women while her father was incarcerated. Her mother and grandmothers were central during that period, and Megan described being surrounded by women who helped form the confidence she would later carry into adulthood.
Her relationship with her father became equally important once he was released. Megan said she became best friends with both of her parents and spoke warmly about how her father encouraged her when she was still young. He died when she was 14, leaving another major loss in a childhood that had already required her to grow up quickly.
Music was already close to home through her mother, Holly Thomas, who rapped under the name Holly-Wood. The name Megan Thee Stallion came before the recording career. She said she changed her social media name in ninth grade, years before she seriously pursued Rap. By 18, she had decided she wanted to start making music herself. What began as teenage personality eventually became the identity she would build an entire career around.
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There was little room to disappear when Megan lost her mother in 2019. Her career was accelerating, and the public version of Megan Thee Stallion still had to show up even while she was trying to understand what grief looked like for herself.
“When my mom passed away, I immediately still had to be Megan Thee Stallion,” she shared. “And so I’m literally trying to figure out how to grieve, how to perform, how to go through everything I’m going through and still do it in front of everybody.”
She said that experience eventually changed the way she handles pain. Instead of forcing herself past it, Megan now tries to let the feeling run its course. “So I’ve learned to just feel what I’m feeling. And just feel it. If it’s pain, if it’s sadness, I have to express it. I might get under my bed and cry. I don’t know, but I have to feel it because I’m never going to be able to come out of it if I don’t get it out of system.”
She also said that experience eventually changed the way she handles pain. Instead of forcing herself past it, Megan now sounds less interested in recreating 2018 than in showing what that persona looks like after everything that followed.
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Source: HotNewHipHop
