Megan Thee Stallion hits No. 1 on Billboard Hot 100 with 'Hiss' amid Nicki Minaj feud
Megan Thee Stallion's diss track "Hiss" slithered to the No. 1 spot on Billboard's Hot 100 chart this week, as the rapper notched a win amid Nicki Minaj's ongoing feud with her.
"We made so much HISSTORY with this one," Megan Thee Stallion captioned an Instagram post Monday.
"Hiss" is the Houston native's third single atop the country's biggest music chart and her first solo song there. She previously sat on the Hot 100 perch with her "Savage Remix" alongside Beyoncé and her Cardi B collaboration "WAP."
"Hiss" launched with 29.2 million first-week streams, 2.9 million radio airplay audience impressions and 104,000 downloads, according to Billboard. The song was released on Hot Girl Productions amid news of her one-of-a-kind new agreement with Warner Music Group where she will release music independently with assistance from WMG. The agreement also allows Megan Thee Stallion to retain ownership over her masters, she announced on Instagram.
Megan Thee Stallion announces summer tour amid Nicki Minaj beef, 'Megan's Law' lyrics
The rapper also announced a new tour and new album in an exclusive interview with "Good Morning America" last week.
"I feel like I've never been able to be outside doing my own thing during the summer since like 2019, so this gonna be the first time that I drop an album on time for the summer. I do want to give the Hotties the Megan Thee Stallion experience," the 28-year-old told "GMA."
'Hiss' tops the charts, features Nicki Minaj shade
"Hiss," which takes aim at her hip-hop cohort, marks a fully-fledged music comeback for Megan Thee Stallion after a series of personal controversies and crises over the past few years.
After the streaming success of their 2019 collaboration "Hot Girl Summer," Megan Thee Stallion's professional relationship with Minaj cooled in recent years. With Minaj's song "Red Ruby Da Sleeze" last year, fans speculated that a lyric was seemingly aimed at Megan Thee Stallion.
"Seven hundred on 'em horses when we fixin' to leave," she raps in "Da Sleeze" before saying she doesn't deal "with horses since Christopher Reeve," a reference to Megan's "Stallion" moniker. (Reeve, the late actor and former Superman, was left permanently paralyzed from the neck down after a near-fatal equestrian accident in 1995.)
In July 2020, rapper Tory Lanez shot Megan Thee Stallion in the feet, a crime for which he is currently serving 10 years in prison after a jury found him guilty last year.
Megan Thee Stallion's return with single "Hiss" (which followed the similarly reptilian track "Cobra") sent a message: She raps that people "don't be mad at Megan," but they're "mad at Megan's Law." Minaj's husband, Kenneth Petty, and her brother, Jelani Maraj, are both registered sex offenders.
Megan's Law is a federal law which requires registered sex offenders to provide personal information to local law enforcement agencies. It was named in memory of Megan Kanka, a seven-year-old who was raped and murdered by her neighbor who was a convicted sex offender in 1994.
In April 1995, Petty was convicted of attempted first-degree rape in connection with a 1994 assault that occurred when both he and the victim were 16. Maraj was found guilty of predatory sexual assault after being charged with repeatedly raping an 11-year-old girl at his home in November 2017. He was later sentenced 25 years to life in prison.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Megan Thee Stallion tops Billboard Hot 100 with 'Hiss'
