by Naila Aroni

After a three-year trial that resulted in the conviction of Tory Lanez on three felony charges in December 2023, the internet’s favourite MC and resident hottie Megan Thee Stallion incrementally retreated away from her charismatic online presence. 

Fans were left puzzled and concerned. Following the hiatus, Megan made a much-anticipated return to pop culture in April with a self-penned essay for Elle Magazine detailing her healing journey after the shooting incident left her physically and emotionally scarred. 

It was clear that Megan’s conflicted thoughts were no longer under lock and key. The article didn’t read like a cover story for one of the world’s most renowned magazines, but more so, excerpts from Megan’s latest diary entry where each revelation is vulnerable and introspective. “The truth is that I started falling into a depression. I didn’t feel like making music. I was in such a low place that I didn’t even know what I wanted to rap about,” she explains. “There would be times that I’d be backstage or in my hotel, crying my eyes out, and then I’d have to pull Megan Pete together and be Megan Thee Stallion”. 

Though she doesn’t specifically ‘name-and-shame’ her bullies and harassers, she contextualises how remarks by industry peers were not only hurtful but added to the mass online apologia for Lanez despite the overwhelming evidence against him that led to his eventual conviction. “Instead of condemning any form of violence against a woman, these individuals tried to justify my attacker’s actions,” Megan says. Music industry moguls like Drake could have and should have levied their much-needed influence and hypervisibility to support Megan’s cause. Instead, Drake was one of the industry heavyweights that doubled down on Megan’s pain by making her the punchline of his collaborative song ‘Circo Loco’ with 21 Savage, where he raps, “This bitch lie ‘bout gettin’ shots, but she still a stallion.”

As journalist Bim Adewunmi succinctly put in the documentary film titled "On The Record", “Black women are more likely to be harmed and less likely to be believed”. When Alexia Norton-Jones reported to her industry peers that Russell Simmons raped her, the ordeal became an “open secret from coast to coast” where Simmons used his intimidation tactics to discredit her and disavower her from lucrative jobs. Just last year, Dr Dre received the inaugural Dr Dre Global Impact Award at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards due to his “multitude of achievements through his innovative, multi-decade career”. Yet, Dee Barnes, one of the women he abused, was blacklisted from the music industry and faced homelessness at one juncture of Dr Dre’s multi-million dollar career. 

When the Recording Academy, a pillar of the music industry, awards well-known abusers like Dr Dre, it’s symbolic of the acclamation abusive men receive for their resilience towards resisting accountability. Being accused of assault is a mere speck when weighed against their star-spangled, “innovative” careers. It’s therefore unsurprising that Dre conveyed how unaffected he was by the incident in the documentary "The Defiant Ones" when he referred to Barnes as a “blemish” on who he is as a man.

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The suffering of Megan The Stallion, Alexia Norton Jones, and Dee Barnes is simply anecdotal but part and parcel of the music industry’s patriarchal design. Gendered power imbalances foster abuse and drive women out of the industry.

Dr Cassandra Jones, a lecturer in Criminology at the University of Northumbria, said that “the very nature of the music industry itself is rife for toxic workplace behaviours”. She explained that men’s domination of the industry, particularly concentrated in senior leadership positions, “translates to certain manifestations such as sexual assault and rape but also bullying and sexual harassment”. Dr Jones' survey about improving women’s workplace conditions in which she interviewed promoter reps of musicians, found that “80% of women did not report abuse. Of the 20% who did report, nothing would happen”. This begs the question: what will it take to make women in music safer?

A popular resolution that’s cited regarding protecting women in the industry is carcerality through criminal trials. While Megan The Stallion’s ordeal resulted in her abuser’s conviction, convicting one of the many bad apples didn’t transform or subvert harmful music industry practices. This discussion becomes even more transparent when we consider the outcome of the judgement to the non-celebrity women who make up a sizable amount of the industry. The bitter truth is that if Megan were not a celebrity whose assault spurred a media frenzy, a low-profile trial would have most likely not resulted in a conviction when most cases of assault are unreported, to begin with.

The Musician’s Union (TMU) in the UK has made a notable start towards upending the culture of abuse. It put together a “sexual harassment at work policy” that encourages organisations working with musicians to reach out to TMU for support for their organisation. Their work also includes campaigning to extend the protections against discrimination and harassment in the Equality Act 2020 to women freelancers who work in music so they are protected against abuse in the workplace. 

Megan rightfully recognises that more transformative efforts, beyond carcerality, need to be done to uproot harmful industry practices beyond sporadic convictions. “We must create safer environments for women to come forward about violent behaviour without fear of retaliation. We must provide stronger resources for women to recover from these tragedies physically and emotionally, without fear of judgement”, she urges. 

Protecting women could manifest in many long-term solutions, such as lobbying for women’s equal pay, advancing women to senior leadership positions in the workplace and ensuring that organisations and companies have formidable work policies against discrimination. The onus should also be on male musicians to disavow the culture that promotes violence against women like Drake’s lyric that ridiculed Megan’s assault. In sum, there is a lot more work to be done to protect women in music, but it’s not impossible and certainly never too late to start.