justanothermusicmeme + favorite female musicians: 8/? - megan thee stallion It was more than just business advice and etiquette, though. So much of what Megan raps about, and how she raps about it, and who she is as a woman, is inherited from her mother and grandmothers, she explains. One of her grandmothers, whom she called Big Mama, taught her about the importance of self-reliance; her other grandmother taught her to always be sweet. And her mother, she says, taught her how to be tough. Confidence was instilled early and reinforced by all three women, who were constantly in Megan’s ear with affirmations. “They were always like, ‘Megan, you’re great. Hundred percent,’ ” she says. “They would always make me feel really, really good. They would always be like, ‘And you don’t need no boy or nobody coming up to you trying to tell you, “Give me this, and I’ll give you that.” ’ And I’d be like, [imitates her voice as a seven-year-old] Yeah! I don’t need no boys at all!”
She often attributes lyrical and sonic inspiration to Southern male artists like Juicy J and Pimp C. Her mom would play Three 6 Mafia, and Megan would study the themes: money, sex, power, high-quality liquor. She heard men rap about, as she says, “what they are gonna do to a girl, or how confident he is, or how tough he is,” and that matrilineal influence reminded her that she could do it too, and better. She thought, “ ‘Damn, this would really be something good if a girl was saying this.’ ”
