Megan Thee Stallion attends the 5th Annual Diamond Ball benefiting the Clara Lionel Foundation at Cipriani Wall Street on September 12, 2019 in New York City.
Taylor Hill/WireImageInternational Women’s Day may have been yesterday, but March is Women’s History Month and it’s just getting started. On Monday (March 8), fashion lifestyle brand Fashion Nova and rapper Megan Thee Stallion announced that they’re teaming up for “Women On Top,” a new initiative supporting women entrepreneurs and women doing inspirational things.
Until March 31, Fashion Nova Cares and the rapper will be spotlighting and giving away $25,000 or more to “inspirational women doing great things.” A total of $1M will be donated to various, preselected women, entrepreneurs, and organizations.
“I’m excited to collaborate with Fashion Nova Cares on the Women on Top initiative and be part of giving one million dollars to support women-led businesses and organizations,” said Stallion in the official press release. “These donations are life-changing and will help women of all ages get one step closer to making their dreams a reality.”
“At Fashion Nova, women empowerment and ongoing advocacy for diversity and inclusion have always been part of our guiding principles,” said Richard Saghian, Founder and CEO of Fashion Nova. “We believe the world will be a better place when all women are provided the opportunity to maximize their potential. This program was created to give women greater advantage as they pursue their passions.”
Recipients will be announced on Fashion Nova Cares initiative’s official website. Last year, Fashion Nova partnered up with Cardi B to donate a total of $1M to support people who have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 1000 people were given $1,000 each. You can find read the names and their words of thanks on Fashion Nova’s website.
On the fashion front, Megan launched her very own Fashion Nova collection last November to bring more representation to the popular clothing brand. “I just realized how big of a lack of representation there is for curvier girls, or taller girls, or girls with bigger feet,” shared in an interview. “Everybody is not just a cookie cutter size, so I just want to make sure that starting with this collab we have better representation with just women in general.”
NEWS
No matter what you thought of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, there was only one undisputed winner by the end of it all: the reaction community in the worlds of streaming and YouTube. Your favorite content creators broke down the bars, reacted to all the most shocking moments, and helped this showdown become one of hip-hop's most culturally significant and resonant moments in a long time... For better or worse. See, the battle's technically not over yet, but only because the 6ix God's idea of victory is clearly quite different. In his federal defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group – his label – for releasing K.Dot's "Not Like Us," he named various content creators who allegedly helped boost the track's widespread popularity and, as a result, its supposedly defamatory nature.
Furthermore, the specific allegation that Drake brings up in this highly controversial lawsuit is that UMG "whitelisted" copyright claims for YouTubers, streamers, etc. concerning "Not Like Us." This means that they would be able to monetize their content without facing a copyright claim from UMG over "Not Like Us," and this isn't really an allegation because various creators have backed this up. But a few important (alleged) caveats that people are talking about online need to be clear. First, "whitelisting" supposedly happens on behalf of a record label behind a song like the West Coast banger, and UMG is instead the distributor of that track. Secondly, as rapper and online personality ScruFaceJean brings up as seen in the post below, tracks like "Push Ups" were also "whitelisted" by its team.
Along with Jean, many other of your favorite content creators spoke out against this Drake lawsuit. Zias! and B.Lou, for example, spoke with their lawyer about the possibility of countersuing for emotional distress, as they found the Toronto superstar's accusations and his implication of them very disturbing and misguided. NoLifeShaq also dragged The Boy through the mud, calling him "soft" and positing that, whether "whitelisting" happened or not, they would react to "Not Like Us" accordingly as they did to his own tracks.
In addition, it's important to bring up that many others fans have pointed to how Drake excitedly used streamers to generate hype and reaction clips for his own diss tracks against Kendrick Lamar. The most direct example is with Kai Cenat, whom he texted to "stay on stream" before dropping "Family Matters." Ironically, the Twitch giant appears in this clowned-upon defamation lawsuit as an example of what the OVO mogul's accusations and implications are. And one more thing: there is no direct link between monetization and algorithmic boosting on sites like YouTube. With all this in mind, content creators seem to feel almost insulted at the idea that they only reacted to the two biggest rappers in the world beefing with each other because one of them would allow them to make money. If Drizzy knew the first thing about the reaction community, maybe he wouldn't have included this...
