The Megan Thee Stallion ethos can be distilled into a single lyric from “NDA,” the first track on her 2022 album Traumazine. “Kill a bitch, all I need is a pencil and a pad.” You can brag about taking any man you want, or how much money you have, but Megan’s ability to write a damn good lyric is something she’s flaunted for her entire career — often, it’s the defining measure of her songs.

Though the era of MEGAN started last fall, with the electric guitar-laden “Cobra,” things sped up this winter with the release of “HISS,” a hardcore, fast-paced diss towards the music industry and the many people who continue to take Tory Lanez’ side after their infamous shooting incident. “Every time I get mentioned, one of y’all bitch-ass n****s get twenty-four hours of attention,” she says on the spoken-word intro, mentioning the burgeoning rappers who use her name to get by. “HISS” also features the line that launched a thousand tweets, “These hoes don’t be mad at Megan, these hoes mad at Megan’s Law,” a diss at Nicki Minaj’s husband, a registered sex offender. Nicki went on a massive, immature and one-sided Twitter rant towards her former friend, but Meg stayed classy and said nothing. One line on “Rattle” hints at Nicki’s threat on her awful diss track “Big Foot”; Megan taunts, “Ain’t got no tea on me, this ho think she TMZ.” Beef squashed, the resulting record focuses on her usual topics — money, sex, and how hot she is.

Like most modern rap albums, MEGAN’s half gems and half filler. It’s a symptom with each of her albums, not helped by the extensive, 18-song tracklist. “Broke His Heart” is simply a meditation on how good her pussy is with repetitive lyrics; “Worthy” is a Lizzo-lite affirmation session (“I’m worthy, not worthless”); “Where Them Girls At” is interrupted by an awful sample; the slow jam of “Spin” feels out of place here, even with a sleek Victoria Monét assist; and even though “Otaku Hot Girl” is peppered with references to the point of overkill, “Mamushi” is the most egregious example of her anime obsession, where she and rapper Yuki Chiba trade off Japanese brags, like a language-learning program we don’t necessarily need to be privy to. Even though “Cobra” is a necessary look at her mental health status and substance abuse, intimate and personal, it’s hard to look past the clunker of the lyric “This pussy depressed.” She explores this at least a little better on “Moody Girl,” where she admits she’s a “Sad little bitch, I be twerkin’ and cryin’.”

MEGAN’s highlights are some of her personal best, however. GloRilla assists with “Accent,” which Megan insists she has, though it rarely comes out: “Thicker than my accent / … Pretendin’ he don’t understand me / So we can talk again.” GloRilla is more apt here with her Mephis twang: “Thought he was a city boy until he met a country bitch.” Another successful feature, the bouncy “B.A.S.” sees two partners addressing their shortcomings in a way that suggests it doesn’t matter too much: “He lyin’ to me and I’m lyin’ to him / Fuck it, guess we both ain’t shit.”

Megan also addresses the rap crowd turning against her simply due to her success — on “HISS,” she said, “Ask a ho why she don’t like me, bet she can’t give you a reason,” but now whether due to jealousy or allegiance to Nicki, she’s finding herself with more enemies than her infectious personality would pull in any other time. On “Rattle,” she seems to accept the sentiment, seeing it for what it is: a joint attempt to take her down. “Only time y’all weak hoes link up / It’s when another bitch tryna get rid of me / Ayy, but fuck it, I’ll go to war with the whole world / Street n****s, rap n***s comin’ for the Hot Girl.” She goes further with the men, calling out their hypocrisy and hesitation dissing other men: “They scared of each other, but beat on the women,” she raps. On “BOA,” too, the initially confusing but ultimately silly sample from Gwen Stefani’s “What You Waiting For?” sets the soundtrack for her to diss people making it big on TikTok, saying that they’re not real rappers. (It also makes for the excellent soundbite of Megan calling out her haters’ failures: “Womp womp womp womp…”)

Megan is a supremely charismatic person and rapper, but MEGAN makes way for too much seriousness, as if she needed to prove herself after the Nicki debacle earlier this year. But “HISS,” which remains MEGAN’s best song, never shied away from the comedy while spitting truth in the next line: “My pussy so famous, might get managed by Kris Jenner next.” Thee Hot Girl dabbles in the fun for a few opportune moments, but MEGAN is less mesmerizing and replayable than previous projects.

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