This week’s artist to watch is Houston native, Megan Thee Stallion, also known as Hot Girl Meg, the H-Town Hottie and Young Tina Snow. Aside from being an up and coming rapper, Megan finds the time to be a full time student, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in health administration at Texas Southern University. Talk about relatable, the rapper has her own mother (who was also a rapper back in her day) as her manager. At only 23 years old, Megan is just getting started, having recently signed a major record deal with independent label 300 Entertainment, alongside the release of her first album.

Megan began attracting national attention after dropping her “Stalli Freestyle” on YouTube. The rapper had been posting regular cyphers and short tracks to her social media accounts for some time before, but this clip gained so much online attention that viewers were begging for her to release a full track. Today, her freestyle has about 1.5 million views on YouTube, and since then she has dropped an EP called “Make It Hot” as well as a full length album, titled “Tina Snow.” While the rapper remains consistent in her hot-girl image, her album shows major growth and maturity for such a young artist. She sheds some of her party girl facade, and goes full pimp on “Tina Snow,” and her followers (pegged “the hotties”) have loved every minute of it. Debuting at No. 11 on the iTunes Hip Hop charts, Megan’s first album seems like the launching pad of a major career.

Megan exudes a level of sexual confidence and control in her lyrics that’s comparable to the likes of Beyoncé, and I’m not sure if it’s something in the Houston water, but it’s mesmerizing. In an interview with Fader magazine, when asked about her sexually alluring lyrics, she emphasized her thoughts on equality in rap, and how if men can cover certain topics in their music, so can women. The rapper states that some of her major influencers were Southern male rappers like the late Pimp C and Three 6 Mafia, along with female rapper Lil Kim. Her alias Tina Snow is a play off of Pimp C’s “Tony Snow,” which explains her pimp-like lyrics in her latest project.

Her album “Tina Snow” provides 30 minutes of straight heat. If her goal was to sound like a female pimp, that is exactly what she achieves. It’s important to note that in interviews she speaks about how being a pimp is more than just selling sex. She says that the word can be defined as working for what you want. Stallion achieves this by fusing both sexually empowering and aggressive lyrics, which is something we see across the board for men, but not nearly enough for women.

In her first track on the album, titled, “WTF I Want,” the Stallion outlines how she gets everything, and does everything she wants. A theme that continues throughout the album, she talks her talk to listeners in the first song, letting us all know that she means business. She raps again about having an independent and go-getter spirit, saying that she’ll get what she wants, when she wants. In her bars, Megan Thee Stallion always gets straight to the point. No questions asked, Megan is about her business, and she does not sugarcoat it. While this straightforward and blunt approach is something we see in male rappers all the time, it’s a breath of fresh air for the majority of female rappers today. There’s a trend of women rappers that exude this hyper feminine image, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but Megan is giving us something different, and she’s doing an extraordinary job at that.

Though one of the least streamed songs, “Cognac Queen” is the fifth song on the album and my absolute favorite. The song starts with a sensual synth line, coupled with audio of Megan laughing and singing. In the song, the Stallion goes through her feelings after getting tipsy off some cognac, probably the notorious Hennessy, often pictured in her Instagram posts. The song goes exceptionally hard to me because it starts off so smooth, but she drops some of the hardest bars. She raps “Went Courvoisier crazy/Got him thinking he my baby/Don’t care what he saying/Speaking all body language/Fall in love would be dangerous.” Here we see some of the genius of Megan, she raps about men as if they are disposable, an interesting allusion to a stereotype of women, and is a sort of method to giving them a taste of their own medicine.

Lastly, the song with the most streams, and the final track on her project, “Cocky AF” shows Megan unleashed. The song title alone, alerts listeners of the content of the song, which is all about confidence. She comes out of the gate with bars, and not more than a few seconds after the beat begins at that. Megan exudes confidence and this is only the hook, she continues to absolutely destroy the lyrics in her verses about being able to attract any man. While she does technically tear the hypothetical “other woman” down in her lyrics, this song is one of the biggest ego boosting songs to release since Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow.” There is something electrifyingly energizing about hearing a confident black woman, like Megan or Cardi, talking their talk, especially when that woman backs it up as well.

Eden Bekele can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @Eden_Bekele.