She was also worried about her career. “I didn’t want to talk to the officers because I didn’t want to be a snitch,” the rapper added. “Snitching is frowned upon in the hip-hop community,” which she identified as a boys’ club.
At first, Mr. Lanez was arrested and charged only with concealing a firearm in the vehicle. But in the days and weeks that followed, Megan Thee Stallion revealed online and in an interview with a detective that she had been shot, eventually naming Mr. Lanez as her assailant. That October, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office charged Mr. Lanez with assault.
Still, for years since, some skeptics and conspiracy theorists have questioned whether Megan Thee Stallion was shot at all. At trial, a surgeon testified to removing bullet fragments from both of the rapper’s feet, with X-rays presented in court showing tiny fragments that remained.
Mr. Lanez, who opted not to testify in his own defense, has not detailed his version of events, though he released an album barely two months after the encounter in which he denied shooting Megan Thee Stallion, focusing instead on their personal relationship.
“We both know what happened that night and what I did/But it ain’t what they sayin’,” he rapped.
Megan Thee Stallion later responded in her own track, titled “Shots Fired,” in which she seemed to recount what led to the shooting — “He talkin’ ’bout his followers, dollars,” she raps, adding, “I told him, ‘You’re not poppin’, you just on the remix’” — as well as its aftermath. (“You offered M’s not to talk, I guess that made my friend excited, hmm/now y’all in cahoots.”)
On the stand, Megan Thee Stallion said she had initially lied about the extent of her personal involvement with Mr. Lanez, including in a television interview with Gayle King, because it was “disgusting,” she said. “How could I share my body with somebody who could shoot me?”
