Megan Thee Stallion’s Structural Incompetence Infuriates Patriarchy

DaBaby’s betrayal of Megan is fueled by him mastering his role, and Megan rejecting hers in a capitalistic music industry.

More than a month ago, DaBaby betrayed the woman who spawned his most successful collaborations with the man who shot her in the foot.

On June 17th, 2021, Tory Lanez dropped the music video for “SKAT.” Megan Thee Stallion’s assailant, who shot her in the foot, continues to have a career where people listen to his music and lend their talents to create visuals for his songs. His apparent immunity to consequences has made him bold. In the song, he raps:

Won’t lie, lil’ bitch had a nigga down But now that I’m out of my feelings (Okay) I’ma stack the money so tall in the crib It be lookin’ like the roof came out of my ceiling (Okay)

The press releases of snippets of DaBaby and Lanez rapping with bobbleheads inside minicars hide the most disturbing sequence of the music video. A YouTube commenter noticed that in the Wild West portion of the video, Lanez is “riding a stallion into the town” and also notes that when he goes outside, “everybody shooting at his feet.” Throughout the entire scene, Lanez dances. While dancing, Lanez shoots all of his targets and then rides back out on the horse he rode in on. Not a single shot from the revolvers and lever-action rifles the white men are using hit him.

In DaBaby’s verse, he claims to be a man who walks alone;

I don’t really wanna fuck with rap niggas, they bitches I’d would rather chill with my daughter and my nieces Actin’ like he love me, I don’t need no new brothers (nope) I don’t want advice, nigga, keep it

Despite this, he has a burgeoning partnership with Lanez. After appearing on his song and music video, he performed after Meg in the Rolling Loud concert in Florida this week. Betting that the audience could not guess who his costumed guest was, DaBaby revealed that Lanez had come to perform with him. Given that Megan had performed before DaBaby’s set, it is highly probable the man who shot her was mere feet away from her in disguise.

Megan the Stallion is the most structurally incompetent rapper in the game.

Some people have reality TV; others, gossip magazines. My dirty habit is rap beef. As long as it remains non-violent, it remains one of my singular joys of Black personhood. Yet this conflict DaBaby is instigating with Megan is sickening. He is using the man he shot her as fuel.

What does this say about Black men — about me — and my relationship to music and violence? And ultimately, what does this say about white supremacy?

“Black men keep picking the wrong side when there aren’t two sides to this — embracing raw capitalism without caring about the safety and respect for those involved damages the Black community,” writes Allison Gaines, editor in chief of Cultured and a frequent contributor for ZORA who recently wrote about DaBaby’s musical choices.

Gaines correctly notes that Black men do not stand by their women. We downplay the impact their leadership and support have in our lives. Talib Kweli continues his online harassment toward Maya Moody. TI can publicly make statements about managing his daughter’s reproductive health and diminishing her bodily autonomy.

Such behavior is a gateway into violence. Abusers such as Chris Brown get to survive their transgressions and continue to have public careers. Men like R. Kelly rape the young and vulnerable women in our community. Over the Fourth of July weekend, Lil Uzi Vert assaulted his ex-girlfriend, Brittany Byrd.

Visibility does not naturally journey into accountability. In this age of Black Lives Matter, where police brutality is caught on film and distributed at the max speed fiberoptic cables allow, we still have Americans who believe we deserve the lead, rubber bullets, tasers, and tear gas launches at our bodies. Most of the hip-hop figures above have had their transgressions broadcasted onto the Internet. If history is prophecy, then DaBaby is likely to survive his behavior toward Meg.

Gaines mentions “raw capitalism” as the cause of this behavior. Black personhood informs me that there is a white man somewhere profiting; as the ancestor Malcolm X quipped, “you show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker.” I want to dig deeper into the wisdom my people’s personhood teaches me to understand how DaBaby felt it was good to betray the woman who made him successful.

In 1977, a group of Black feminists jointly released the Combahee River Collective Statement. While making the 14th and 15th Amendments a political reality for Black folk, the Civil Rights Movement did little to improve the social and economic condition of Black women. “It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements…that led to the need to develop a politics that was anti-racist, unlike those of white women, and anti-sexist, unlike those of Black and white men,” the collective wrote. Realizing they needed their own praxis, they came together because their “liberation is a necessity [,] not as an adjunct to somebody else’s.”

The Collective identified capitalistic exploitation as the root of their suffering. They reflected, for example, how they were called “smart-ugly” growing up for pursuing a capitalistic directive of improving themselves:

We discovered that all of us, because we were “smart” had also been considered “ugly,” i.e., “smart-ugly. “Smart-ugly” crystallized the way in which most of us had been forced to develop our intellects at great cost to our social lives. The sanctions in the Black and white communities against Black women thinkers is comparatively much higher than for the white women, particularly ones from the educated middle and upper classes.

What the Collective was resisting with their intellectual pursuits is patriarchal commodification. Patriarchy is the belief that being born with a penis gives you the right to rule. Under capitalism, that belief became embedded in who dominates our economic structure. You cannot understand American capitalism without understanding slavery and the systems of neo-peonage that arose afterward such as convict leasing, sharecropping, redlining, contract leasing, and subprime mortgages. The unique horror of the American capitalist system is to combine ancient patriarchy with racial subordination, which meant that Black women would have to seek dual redress to rise into the status of full citizenship.

“Being structurally incompetent injects friction into every interaction between people, and between people and organizations, and between organizations and ideologies,” Tressie McMillan Cottom writes in Thick. When Black women transgress patriarchal commodification, the structural incompetence elicits a defense response from men who do not question patriarchy or assert it is the natural way of the world.

Megan the Stallion is the most structurally incompetent rapper in the game.

“Black men keep picking the wrong side when there aren’t two sides to this — embracing raw capitalism without caring about the safety and respect for those involved damages the Black community,” writes Allison Gaines.

Meg is largely self-made, coming up through the mixtape and streaming grind. Her mother kept a watchful eye over her, guiding her career both on Earth and, now, through ancestorhood. Meg dominated nearly every rapper in her XXL Freshman Class freestyle. She went into a legal battle with J. Prince, the boogyman Suge Knight thought he was, to resist her commodification. She unapologetically centers her sexual pleasure and encourages other women to do the same. Meg maintains clear financial standards for the men who seek to access her time. Her music combines the trifecta of addictive flows, witty wordplay, and boomin’ beats. She has won three Grammys in comparison to DaBaby’s one, and Tory Lanez’s none. In nearly all areas related to success in the music business, Meg is superior to the men with which she collaborates.

Her refusal to let men transform her into a commodity enrages them. So thus, you have Lanez harassing the woman he shot, calling a woman he cannot measure up to financially and in stature a “lil’ bitch” and bragging about money in which she undoubtedly has in greater excess. DaBaby, who claimed on the same song that he needs no brothers, uses his rising antipathy against Meg to form such a bond with Lanez. Meg’s structural incompetence is so powerful it forces the men she surpasses to behave in violent and financially deleterious ways. How else to explain DaBaby tossing his future bag into the Grand Canyon by working with Lanez?

Both get cover of their behavior from Interscope Records, a record label managed by a white man, John Janick. He is Malcolm X’s proverbial capitalist, drawing wealth from Lanez’s and DaBaby’s behavior. This does not exonerate both rappers from their behavior. They are, however, exceptionally structurally competent, performing their roles best in a way to make their money and fame. Any consequence they suffer is temporary for they have a capitalist who refuses to drop them as a patron.

It was hard for me to write about Lanez and DaBaby’s treatment of Meg, as I know their behavior reflects on me. Their celebrity amplifies their misanthropy. But Black men everywhere have Black women in their lives described by the Collective — intelligent, hardworking, their talents making them the stronger of the species. The greatest thing Black personhood can do in its method of living and loving in the West is to honor their industry and talent.

Please read more of Established in 1865’s coverage of music and Black personhood below: