Megan Thee Stallion knew she wanted to be a rapper from a young age, but wasn’t quite ready to let others know. “I’ve been writing since I was maybe seven,” she previously told Rolling Stone. “I was kind of shy about telling people that I could rap for the longest.” This included her mum, the late Holly Thomas, who Megan idolised as a child. “My mum was a rapper. She didn’t know I wanted to be a rapper, but I would literally watch her in the studio all day. I’m like, ‘This lady is everything,'” she recently shared with Tyra Banks for Sports Illustrated.
Megan finally revealed the truth after she turned 18. “I wanted to be perfect to her,” she added. “Finally, I went to college. I was like, ‘OK, I’ve probably held this secret in long enough. I started going to the studio by myself’ . . . didn’t want her to shut me down. I didn’t want her to say, ‘You’re not serious about this. You don’t know.'” From 2001-2007, Holly was part of a rap collective known as the Screwed Up Click and went by the name, “Holly-Wood.” “I finally came to her . . . and I was like, ‘I can rap.’ She was like, ‘No you can’t . . . let me hear.’ I was like, ‘Ok, Mama. Don’t whoop me, but I’m about to curse, OK?’ So, I started going off and I’m cursing,” Megan continued. “She’s like, ‘Where did you learn all those words?!'”
In 2019, Holly died at the age of 47 after a battle with a cancerous brain tumor. “No matter what I’m going through, I still want to keep going,” Megan told The FADER in May 2019. “Just to show people you can still be strong and you can still face your everyday life. Even when everything coming down on you. I didn’t cancel none of my shows ’cause I just knew – I know – how my momma is, and I know she wouldn’t want me to stop.” Also because of her mum and grandmother, Megan is currently pursuing a degree in health administration from Texas Southern University. “I’m doing it for me, but I’m also doing it for the women in my family who made me who I am today.”
