Megan Thee Stallion explained why she waited to tell her mom she wanted to become a rapper

Megan Thee Stallion revealed in a new interview that she waited until she was 20 to tell her mom that she wanted to become a rapper.

“I wanted to be perfect to her,” Megan told Tyra Banks for Sports Illustrated. “I was like, ‘No, I’m not gonna tell her yet.’ But she would have these CDs laying around the house — like, instrumentals — and I would take them in my room and I would take the beats and write to them in my room.”

As previously reported, Meg is the first rapper to grace the cover of SI, while Tyra became the first Black woman to achieve the feat in 1996.

Meg said she came clean to her mom when she entered college. “I was like, ‘I can rap.’ And she was like, ‘No, you can’t,'” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Okay Mama, don’t whoop me, but I’m about to curse, okay?’ So I started going off and I’m cursing and [she gasps,] ‘Where did you learn all those words?!'”

Adds Meg, “And she said, ‘You’re not coming out until you’re 21.'”

The three-time Grammy winner talked about what inspired her to pursue a rap career, revealing she started practicing her craft when she turned seven when she realized she “wanted to entertain everybody,” then waited ten years before telling her mom.

Rapping is in Meg’s blood because her late mother, Holly Thomas, was known as the rapper Holly-Wood. Thomas, who was also Meg’s manager, died in 2019 of brain cancer.

The new issue of Sports Illustrated is out now.