After staying silent since allegedly shooting Megan Thee Stallion in July, last week Tory Lanez tweeted an apology. Not to Megan but to his fans for his silence, before promising to address the situation later that night. The internet thought he was going to do an Instagram Live, as he’d been breaking IG viewership records with his Quarantine Radio broadcasts early this summer. Unfortunately, what happened was much worse. 

 

Followers of this saga waited up till 12:00AM ET on Thursday only for Tory to, moments before midnight, announce his new 17-track album DAYSTAR (his birth name) would be available in moments: 

“There is a time to stay silent. And a time to speak ... I said all I could say on this … ALL PLATFORMS ... #DAYSTAR ... I’ll be back to y’all soon ... respectfully …" 

I felt so tricked. Megan said he shot her, and prior to this he’s said nothing, and then he gets the world’s attention thinking we’re going to get his version of the events and instead it’s to promote an album. You allegedly shot her, and now you’re going to profit off that? That’s trash. 

What made things worse was watching some people tweeting about how the album was really good. But thankfully, a lot of people on Twitter were asking people not to even stream the album at all. Especially in the same week that we saw no charges filed against the officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s killing, like no charges for the actual killing. The conversation about protecting Black women is growing louder and louder, and that’s why there wasn’t an appetite to hear Tory’s thoughts when he’s going to be getting paid for every stream. I was totally willing to hear his side of the story, but I’m not going to hear it through a forum in which he profits, and I wasn’t in the minority either. This is probably the most publicized music release he’s ever had, and yet he’s on track for the lowest first week sales of his career.

 

To summarize the album’s content, Tory repeatedly suggests he’s being “framed” for the shooting. On the album’s opening track he seems to doubt if she was even shot: “How the f—k you get shot in your foot, don’t hit no bones or tendons?” Although, he doesn’t give any detail about what happened that night, citing the fact that it’s an open case, he does confirm he was flirting with Kylie Jenner at the pool party they all attended earlier on the day of the incident — which reportedly caused conflict between him and Megan. 

I’ve written before about how the conversation around this incident was at one point rooted in comedy, but it’s nice to see a cultural shift on how this story is being covered. 

High Snobiety announced in an IG post that they will no longer cover Tory Lanez, as “the rapper just added to his list of disgraceful behaviour by dropping the most toxic album of the year.”

Complex published a piece titled, Tory Lanez’ Daystar Is Much Worse Than Just a Terrible Album, calling the surprise LP, “a project too contemptible to be evaluated on any musical scale".

 

Even members of the old guard like the National Post ran the story under this headline: In new album, Brampton rapper-turned-clown Tory Lanez denies shooting Megan Thee Stallion. 

Increasingly people want the brands they support to have values that align with their own and that’s coming at a time when people are getting tired of Black women dying and getting documentaries instead of justice. Now Black women are getting shot (allegedly) and albums are released denying it happened? I’m not trying to make a direct comparison between Breonna Taylor and Megan Thee Stallion because I would never, but it’s about respecting Black women. Even if at the end of this whole legal process Tory Lanez is not found guilty of shooting Megan Thee Stallion, hospital records confirm somebody shot her, and profiting off her pain is not respecting Black women. 

Megan remained largely silent on the subject over the weekend apart from a couple of Instagram posts. One asserting that “Nothing REAL can be threatened.” As for the other: