Tory Lanez & Megan Thee Stallion - Legal Battle, Social Media's Impact, Innocent Till Proven Guilty

2020 was definitely a crazy year! We had Covid-19 disrupt the normal pattern of the world and sent the globe into lockdown. For the majority of the population, we were not used to working or studying from home and not having recourse to socialising outdoors or living our usual routines.

So how did we survive with being indoors so much? Our use in social media rose well last year when 'July 2020 saw a rise of 10.5% in social media usage, compared with July 2019 (https://www.business.com/articles/social-media-patterns-during-the-pandemic/)' and do you know which artist really used this to his advantage? Tory Lanez! In early summer 2020, Tory began appearing on his Instagram Live with 'Quarantine Radio' which proved to be a very popular hit and at one point amassed well over 300,000 live viewers! Tory also broke record of having the most viewers on a live stream on Instagram and he had guests like Drake, Justin Bieber and... Megan Thee Stallion ("Megan") appear.

Tory additionally accrued a lot of followers on his Instagram as well as more streams on music platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music so it's safe to say that life was going great for him at this point.

As well as having Houston rapper, Megan appear multiple times on his Quarantine Radio, the pair were spotted hanging out together at the annual Roc Nation Brunch (an exclusive event held by rapper and businessman Jay-Z) and some speculated the pair were dating but that this was being kept very 'hush hush'.

It all changed in July 2020 when reports emerged that Tory had allegedly shot Megan in the foot after a night spent at a house party together. Video footage was circulating of a vehicle surrounded by armed police and a limping Megan walking away from the vehicle with her hands in the air. So what on earth happened?!

That's exactly it! The public don't really know what happened before that moment but Megan posted some weeks later a picture of her foot having received stitches, and she said that it was wounds from having been shot. The first question I had was, "was it Tory who shot her?" and the second was "if Tory did shoot her, was it by accident or on purpose?".

Megan was adamant on her social media that Tory was the culprit and stated that he had been arrested with charges pending against him but Tory was AWOL so it was, for a very long time just Megan's version of events circulating and boy did they circulate well. Megan stated that black women need to be protected from violence and abuse and this, I think is what disabled the public to ask whether or not the shooting was by accident or whether this was a Tory's intention.

Before she named Tory, Megan refused to name him as the culprit and she allegedly told officers at the scene that the injury to her foot was from broken glass; she said she lied due to fear of the repercussions.

The narrative that Megan went with suggested strongly that Tory did this on purpose and she also suggested that Tory and/or his team tried to bribe Megan's friend into not giving evidence against him (as she and another were in the same vehicle as Megan and Tory at the time of shooting). The interesting thing however is that months later, this same friend that was allegedly offered a bribe fell out with Megan and began to insinuate that Megan was withholding a lot of information (suggesting Megan was at fault) regarding the circumstances of the shooting and the friends fell out - it doesn't seem like they have made up since.

Megan also appeared on her Instagram live and said that Tory should stop lying.

Fellow celebrities did not help the Megan narrative in the absence of Tory's side of the story. Beyonce was one of many celebrities who supported Megan during this time and we all know how influential Beyonce is. Other celebrities openly spoke against Tory. I'm in no way saying that it is wrong for celebrities to support one another, but the narrative that was being painted was as if Tory had done this on purpose/maliciously and further insinuated that Tory had no love or respect for black women. I think such strong suggestions should only be made where there is clear evidence of what happened and in this case, we had only constantly heard from Megan and not Tory.

It is not clear where Tory was during this time, whether he was advised to stay off social media my his PR team (which is likely because hashtags such as #CancelToryLanez and #ToryLanezHateTrain were trending on Twitter for weeks with users making fun of his height, hairline and music statistics) or it was to help him deal mentally with all the backlash. Consequently, his popularity declined with hundreds of thousands of people un-following his Instagram page and ceasing to stream his music.

It was in late 2020 that Tory returned slowly to social media and announcing that he had a new album on the way. It's safe to say that he didn't get the warmest welcome but this did not deter him from making a comeback. Tory in doing this, did post some subliminal tweets regarding the legal situation between himself and Megan and these purported to uphold his innocence and at one point he said that if he had shot Megan, in front of witnesses, that he would have already been in jail. I meaaaaan, fair point right?

I can't lie, when this all came out for a short space of time I was swept away with Megan's narrative and almost forgot our golden rule - innocent until proven guilty. It has now almost been a year since this occurred and there haven't been any more updates on this situation.

Last week Tory appeared on social media complaining about music streaming platforms. He was accusing them of blackballing him in that although they had his latest album and singles on their platforms, they did not treat him like they did with other artists with new music - by adding these to their playlists and marketing them. Due to this, Tory's latest album 'Playboy' did not perform too well and featuring artists like Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and Dexta Daps receiving backlash for working with him.

I do not think these streaming platforms would have done this had Tory not been involved with this legal drama and as such, I don't think it's fair that he gets sub-par treatment because of it... especially where he has not been convicted of anything whatsoever!

It will be interesting to see the U-Turn in peoples feelings and opinions towards Tory if he is able to prove some degree of innocence or to debunk Megan's story/narrative. The issue with social media is that it allows people to be so quick with commenting on situations they do not yet have full knowledge of and unfortunately, the internet can be so very ruthless; I just imagine how all this would feel where the world has turned against you, with fellow celebrities too and you haven't even had the opportunity to defend yourself.

This is not me taking sides because I understand both sides of the coin and note I said above that at one point I was looking at Tory sideways and in addition, I felt guilty wanting to listen to his music because for a brief moment, I felt all the evidence seemed stacked against him. But I remembered, everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

Sharon Shumbambiri.

Follow me on Instagram: @SharonAtTheBar