The battle between Megan Thee Stallion and her label, 1501 Certified Entertainment, continued today as Megan made an appearance on ESPN’s First Take to chat about her career. I too was initially confused as to why Meg was being interviewed on ESPN (a channel I had previously been led to believe is primarily about sports and the Scripps National spelling bee), but the appearance was likely a jab at 1501 CEO Carl Crawford, who was formerly professional baseball player. And I mean they did talk about the Houston Rockets?
(I would like to say that she is absolutely rocking this cute down-to-business bob.) When asked about how she navigates a male-dominated industry, Megan responded with some not so subtle shade towards her label:
“I’m not scared to back down and, at the end of the day, I want to be treated how you want me to treat you.”
After the interview, Megan once again turned to Instagram, making a post which addressed both the attempt by 1501 to prevent her from releasing her album on Friday and the Instagram post from Rap-A-Lot Records founder J. Prince earlier today. J. Prince was mentioned in Megan’s lawsuit against 1501 because Megan alleges 1501 CEO Carl Crawford used his relationship with Prince to intimidate people in the music industry. In his Instagram post, Prince called Megan a liar, a dictator, and a pawn (yes it seems unlikely she could be both a dictator and a pawn), and went as far as to bring up Megan’s mother, who passed away in March of last year.
Disrespecting someone’s recently deceased parent? That’s low.
As disheartening as this situation is, Megan is just the latest of many young female artists who have been stuck in exploitative contracts they signed at a young age that threatened to derail their careers. Think Tinashe, JoJo, Kelis, and undoubtedly countless more artists whose careers fizzled out for reasons that never came to light. But luckily, Megan’s situation is looking a little more hopeful. As she said in the caption of her Instagram post:
“I will stand up for myself and won’t allow two men to bully me, I am NO ONES PROPERTY.”
Talk about some real hot girl shit. [Vulture]
As part of his divorce settlement with his now ex-wife, William Shatner was awarded a somewhat unusual asset—horse semen. I wonder, how much does rich people’s horse semen go for? Is it equivalent to getting your favorite television, or more like getting your favorite car?
The “Star Trek” star will walk away with two of their horses, Renaissance Man’s Medici and Powder River Shirley, and two dogs, Macchiato and Double Espresso, as well as “all horse semen” and equipment used for horse breeding, according to court documents.
Elizabeth, a horse trainer, will get horses Belle Reve’s So Photogenic and Pebbles and was also granted visitation rights with notice for the other horses.
There is something so ominous about the phrase “all horse semen”. How much semen are these horses producing? Is Shatner selling the semen? Is he just breeding the horses with other rich people’s horses and therefore the semen and the potential foals the semen helps to produce are also rightfully his? What circumstances arose during this divorce that led to it being specified in the settlement that Shatner got the horses AND ALSO their semen? And perhaps I’m getting too technical but does this language imply that Shatner has the right to not only his horses’ semen but also his ex-wife’s horses’ semen (despite not technically having ownership over the horses themselves anymore)?
I could continue to ask questions because I have legions more, but I’d rather just never type the phrase “horse semen” ever again. [Page Six]