“Bad Bitches Have Bad Days, Too”: Megan Thee Stallion, Doechii, and Black Women’s Expressions of Depression and Anxiety in Hip Hop

Hip hop has long featured discussions of mental health, from one of the genre’s earliest canonical examples, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five’s “The Message” (1982) to The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Suicidal Thoughts” (1994). In the last twenty-five years the number of rap songs addressing mental health issues has increased. With mental health discourse becoming a more integrated aspect of American culture, several high profile rappers, such as Kid Cudi, J. Cole,  Kendrick Lamar, and others have disclosed their own struggles with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and addiction. These disclosures have largely been met with appreciation from fans. While this discourse tends to praise Black men for addressing mental illnesses honestly in the genre, Black women, who, according to a recent study, experience depression symptoms at a much higher rate than almost any other population subgroup, have not been given the same consideration.

Megan Thee Stallion and Doechii are among the few women rappers who have openly addressed these topics in their music. Megan Thee Stallion’s 2022 Traumazine album addresses, among other topics, the rapper’s experiences with mental illness, and her 2024 hit “Cobra” further details her experiences of suicidal ideation, depression, and anxiety. Doechii’s mixtape/album, Alligator Bites Never Heal, traces a narrative arc of struggles and success with the track, “Denial Is a River” explicitly addressing mental illness and addiction. Unlike Black men rappers or white women pop stars, these artists deflect the vulnerability that typically accompanies such musical disclosures. Doechii and Megan Thee Stallion engage with humor and hardness respectively to both articulate their lived experiences of trauma and response, and to distance themselves from any perceived weaknesses that might accompany such exposure. This paper takes a Black feminist intersectional approach to understanding the ways these two rappers address their specific experiences of anxiety and depression through hip hop.

July 7-11, 2025

IASPM Conference

L’Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France

“Uncle Johnny Made My Dress”: Beyoncé, Renaissance, and Capitalization of Black Queer Cultures

When “Break My Soul,” the lead single from Beyoncé’s seventh studio album, Renaissance, was released during Pride Month, June 2022, it was quickly apparent that project would center Black queer cultures. A dance track built primarily on an interpolation of Black queer, gender non-conforming New Orleans artist Big Freedia’s bounce track, “Explode” (2014) and Robin S.’s house club hit, “Show Me Love” (1990), “Break My Soul” sonically invokes Black queer lineages and presents an anthem of resilience. Building on that track’s success, the full Renaissance album, the Renaissance World Tour of 2023, and the December 2023 release of Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé, all demonstrated the project’s indebtedness to Black queer cultures and artists.

In this paper, I build on previous scholarship on ways that Beyoncé incorporates Black queer cultural practices in her albums and her stage performances to interrogate the relationship between the star and Black queer representation through Renaissance. These influences are manifested in musical choices, lyrics, featured and sampled artists who appear on the album, choreography in stage performance, and in the symbiotic relationship she has with fans, particularly through social media. Beyoncé both celebrates and capitalizes on Black queer cultural practices and labor in ways that do not always benefit Black queer communities and artists. For example, Beyoncé’s inclusion of samples of queer artists, rather than in-studio or onstage collaborations, suggests a distancing from these very artists. Additionally, while the Renaissance film was released on World AIDS Day and features a segment on Beyoncé’s late Uncle Johnny, a queer man who died from AIDS-related illness, it fails to name and address the epidemic that has impacted the Black queer communities that have so deeply influenced Renaissance. While Renaissance is celebrated for its Black queer inclusion, we should remain attentive to the power asymmetries it also enables.

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