Arriving later in the year than their 2019 edition, Time shared their annual “100 Most Influential People” list on Tuesday night. The magazine unveiled this year’s iteration of the list through a broadcast on ABC. Of the many names to make the list, only a few are given the honor to grace the magazine’s cover for the issue and Megan Thee Stallion is one of them. Megan joins ten other names who appear on the eight different variations of the magazine’s issue. The other cover stars are The Weeknd, Dwayne Wade, Gabrielle Union, Dr. Anthony Fauci, founders of the Black Lives Matter movement Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, New York nurse Amy O’Sullivan, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
Here’s how we chose the 2020 #TIME100 list https://t.co/beNkfiE5nM
— TIME (@TIME) September 23, 2020
For her cover issue, actor Taraji P. Henson wrote about Megan and praised the Houston rapper for musical talents and her overall “strength” as a woman, calling her “deep” and a “free-spirit.” “The industry might try to pigeonhole her in this rap game, but she’s got a plan that’s much bigger,” she said in the write-up. “And we got her. I just want her to keep winning.”
Other notable names from the music to land on the 2020 Time 100 Most Influential People issue include Selena Gomez, J Balvin, Halsey, Jojo Siwa, and Jennifer Hudson.
Read Henson’s full write-up on Megan below and check out the entire Time 100 list here.
I remember hearing Megan Thee Stallion on one of those famous DJ radio shows a few years ago. She rode the beat like I’d never heard anybody ride the beat in a long time—and I’m a hip-hop head. There was something about this woman. Once you discover her, you become a fan. I don’t like to put the stigma of the word strong on Black women because I think it dehumanizes us, but she has strength—strength through vulnerability. She’s lost much of her family—her mother, her father, her grandmother—yet she is the epitome of tenacity, of pulling herself up by her bootstraps. She was shot this summer, and still people tried to tear her down. But she’s out here still loving and being sweet. It’s invigorating to see her become a platinum-selling artist with the viral hit “Hot Girl Summer” and multiple No. 1 songs in the past year, “Savage” and “WAP.” But you would be a fool to think that’s all there is to her. She’s deep. She’s enrolled in college. She’s an entertainer. She’s a free spirit; I see that in her. The industry might try to pigeonhole her in this rap game, but she’s got a plan that’s much bigger. And we got her. I just want her to keep winning.
Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.