Megan Thee Stallion Reveals That She Was Shot By Tory Lanez

Megan thee Stallion should be reveling in the overwhelming success of her viral music collab with Cardi B, but instead of celebrating yet another Hot 100 hit, the rapper is being forced to relive the trauma of her shooting incident earlier this summer. As the investigation continues, Megan has officially confirmed the identity of the person who shot her: Tory Lanez.

In July, Megan, Tory, and a friend were pulled over by Los Angeles police officers who had been notified of a domestic disturbance. When the LAPD showed up at the scene, they detained the stars only to realize that Megan’s feet were bleeding; she told authorities that she had sustained the injuries after stepping on glass and was promptly rushed to the hospital. Lanez was taken into police custody after officers found a concealed weapon in his car.

All parties involved initially kept quiet about what had occurred in the vehicle, leaving fans to wonder about the details about the incident. However, Megan slowly began speaking up when she saw that the story was being twisted in the news and on the internet. As it turns out, her injuries were actually gunshot wounds, and she’d needed serious surgery to remove the bullets from her feet. 

Yesterday, Megan revealed on Instagram Live that Lanez was the person responsible for her injuries, confirming the internet's theories about the identity of the shooter. She claimed that the Toronto rapper, who she was friends with at the time, had shot her for no reason during a passionate argument taking place in his vehicle. On the LAPD's arrival, Megan said that she was too scared to tell the authorities the truth because she feared for her and Lanez' lives.

"I didn't tell the police what happened immediately because I didn't want to die," Megan explained on IG Live. "I didn't want the police to shoot me because it's a n---- in the car with a gun."

"If you really want to tell the motherfucking truth, I tried to save this n----," she continued. "Even though he shot me, I tried to spare him. And y'all motherfuckers not sparing me — that's crazy."

The rapper expressed her frustration at even having to explain herself though she is the victim. Megan emphasized that she had never planned to say anything about what really happened, but the combination of alleged behind-the-scenes scheming from Lanez and his team and the ridiculous discourse about the situation online made her come forward.

Megan's Live was heartbreaking and infuriating for a number of reasons, one of the most disturbing being her initial rationale of wanting to protect the person who harmed her. In light of the tumultuous state of our country right now, the Black community is working hard to defend our civil rights, with Black women doing a significant amount of the labor. Unfortunately, even as we take to the streets to protest police brutality against Black people (and most protests are specifically triggered by the death of a Black man), Black women are often placed in harm's way by the very people they're speaking up for; just months ago, activist Oluwatoyin Salau was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by a Black man literal days after leading several Black Lives Matter rallies in Tallahassee.

Black women and girls face racism and sexism in the combined terror that is misogynoir, sometimes from our very own community. This intersectional oppression is what informs our triple consciousness (an expansion of W.E.B. DuBois' idea of "double consciousness") and is exactly why we can't afford to put race before gender or vice versa. Black and a woman — never either/or.

"Stop fucking acting like Black women are the motherfucking problem," concluded Megan on her Live. "Stop acting like Black women are aggressive when all they be doing is speaking the motherfucking facts, and you motherfuckers can't handle it.

As a victim of violence, Megan should never have had to explain her position in the first place; when we learned that she had been shot, there should not have been inquiry as to what she might have done to "deserve" the injuries. The situation shouldn't have become a meme or a fodder for a silly podcast episode either. The world should have believed Megan, and the world should have protected her, too.