Megan Thee Stallion's New Album is a Love Letter to Traumatized Black Women

It’s 2 a.m. on a Sunday night (or Monday morning, I suppose). Meg Thee Stallion, our favorite Hot Girl Coach and Houston Hottie dropped her second album, “Traumazine,” a few days ago. They’ve been outspoken about the different amounts of trauma they’ve been through the past few years (death, domestic violence, you name it), but I didn’t know just how potent the album would be.

Let me start off with this:

Any Black woman who loudly embraces her emotions regardless of how happy, angry, pissed off, depressed, or anxious they may be is performing a radical statement in itself. A Black woman having emotions shouldn’t be seen as a radical political statement or revolutionary, yet sadly it is and that’s what makes “Traumazine”such an important album.

Meg starts off with the song “NDA,” where she speaks to different people who have hurt and betrayed her in the past, saying enough is enough to all to ex-friends, bloggers, and people who have preyed on her downfall and hurt or harmed her. It continues in another song, my personal favorite, “Not Nice,” where she embraces the fact that she is, literally, not nice. 

Maybe I’m digging too deep here, but Black women constantly have to worry about being seen as angry. It’s because of this we may go out of our way to hide our frustrations, anger, sadness, etc. Meg is loudly raising a middle finger in the air to all of that. She’s no longer hiding her emotions or choosing the high road when people do her wrong, and that’s an important lesson for trauma survivors, but also for Black women especially.

When we go through trauma there’s definitely a spectrum on what’s an acceptable way to show that we’re hurt, versus the opposite. It’s OK to be sad, but it’s not OK to give people power over us, whatever that means. It’s OK to write angry journals, but it’s not OK to tell that person that they got us fucked up. It’s OK to be sad, but it’s not OK to be angry. When you’re a public facing celebrity, this gaze becomes all the more polarizing, and for someone like Meg who was shot, then gaslit by the man who shot her, her ex-best friend, and the public eye after losing her mother and grandmother, well…you can imagine the pressure that would come with showing your more vulnerable side, even if it’s angry or anxious. 

As Meg raps her way through this album, giving us bar after bar speaking to her mental health and wrong doers, I personally felt a sense of vindication listening to her reclaim her life, her trauma, and shout out that if people do her dirty moving forward, she will fight back. Trauma survivors, and especially Black women, deserve to be able to fight back regardless of how we’ll look. 

“Traumazine” is a love letter to the Black women who are trauma survivors, warriors, and victims alike. It’s for the Black women who were deemed crybabies – being gaslit over their trauma and were told how they should react and feel. She did this for us, y’all, but most importantly, she did this for her. 

Give it a listen, especially her song “Anxiety,” below.

 

“All I really wanna hear is, ‘It’ll be OK’

Bounce back ’cause a bad bitch can have bad days

All I really wanna hear is, ‘It’ll be OK’

Bounce back ’cause a bad bitch can have bad days”