Our Times music reporters discuss the guilty verdict from today’s Tory Lanez trial and the sad spectacle of misogyny against Black women that surrounded it.
Megan Thee Stallion said Tory Lanez shot her in both feet on a July 2020 evening in the Hollywood Hills.
More than two years after the shooting, an L.A. jury said they believed her.
On Friday, Lanez, the Canadian rapper born Daystar Peterson, was convicted of all three charges connected to the shooting of hip-hop superstar Megan Thee Stallion: assault with a semi-automatic firearm, carrying an unregistered firearm and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
Lanez faces more than 20 years in prison and possible deportation.
The verdict arrives after a trial rife with false starts, conflicting testimonies and bizarre plot twists. Megan Thee Stallion’s former friend and assistant, Kelsey Nicole, told detectives that Lanez, 30, was the shooter in a lengthy interview in September. She also texted Megan’s bodyguard the night of the incident, saying “Help, Tory shot Meg.”
But on the stand, she contradicted her previous statements, saying she didn’t even know if Megan Thee Stallion, born Megan Pete, had been shot that night, despite sitting next to her in an SUV. She admitted that Lanez had offered her $1 million in the wake of the shooting yet denied it was a bribe and claimed she did not accept it.
Beyond the courtroom, the trial brought out the cancerous misogynoir within hip-hop and its online community. Blogs, personalities and Twitter pages routinely slanted the conversation in favor of Lanez, culminating in several outlets claiming that he was found not guilty while the jury was still deliberating.
Throughout the ordeal, Megan Thee Stallion, 27, has not only persevered but taken her career to new heights. She won three Grammys in 2021 on the strength of her song “Savage,” featuring an appearance by Beyoncé on the remix, delivered the sexually liberating No. 1 anthem “WAP” with Cardi B, hosted “Saturday Night Live” and landed lucrative partnerships with Nike, CashApp, Netflix and more.
But the shooting and resulting media circus took a toll. While appearing in court on the second day of the trial, Megan’s voice cracked on the stand as she spoke of the turmoil she’d suffered since telling the world who shot her in 2020.
