Megan Thee Stallion is back in Texas for the holidays and the rapper is opening up about the emotional loss of her mother and grandmother this year.
It’s been a breakout year for the Houston native, who has seen her career skyrocket to new heights. But this her first Christmas without both women, and she has been feeling the loss.
In a short video addressed to her fans, she revealed that she couldn’t record the video without breaking down into tears a number of times.
“This year I lost my mom and my grandmother in the same month,” she says in the video. “Although all these positive things have been happening to me, and I’ve been trying to do good, been trying to keep a smile on my face, stay strong, to stay happy for me and my other grandmother and the rest of my family, it’s pretty hard.”
Megan’s mother and manager, Holly “Holly-Wood” Thomas, died from a brain tumor in March. Her grandmother passed away two weeks later.
“This is the first Christmas that I’m [spending] without them, and I just wanted to give some hope to my hotties that might be going through something too,” she continued. “I just wanted to spread some positivity and tell ya’ll to stay positive, stay kind through your hard times because the pain doesn’t last forever. Try not to get in a dark place.”
Megan was inspired to enter the rap game because of her mother, who was also a rapper. She told ESSENCE she would spend countless hours listening to her mom and started writing her own rhymes at an early age.
“I knew I wanted to be a rapper when I was, like, 5. My mom was a rapper. I would go to the studio with her, and that definitely showed me I can do this, I wanna do this,” she recalled. “I remember my first time ever listening to rappers like Pimp C and Biggie, and being like, ‘All this would sound super cool if a girl was saying it.’”
And her advice to anyone else watching her Christmas video: “Always try to be kind to others because you never know what they’re going through.”