The #SavageChallenge has gotten everyone dancing along to Megan Thee Stallion, and we mean everybody. As the preeminent meme taking over TikTok/Instagram during this time of quarantine, everyone is happy to proclaim how they’re “classy, bougie, ratchet / sassy moody, nasty.” So, when it was time for Megan to follow Lil Nas X’s example and unleash a remix of her hit, she enlisted the biggest star on the planet: Beyonce! The official remix dropped on Apr. 29 on Tidal first, naturally, but it was rolled out to the other digital streaming platforms afterward. Needless to say, fans were ecstatic to hear Queen Bey lend her vocals to the biggest hit of 2020 so far.
Seriously, Beyonce spits fire on the remix. “Please don’t get me hyped (I’m hyped), write my name in ice (Ice) / Can’t argue with the lazy bitches, I just raised my price / I’m a boss, I’m a leader, I pull up in my two-seater And my momma was a savage, think I got this shit from Tina,” she raps on her first verse, via Genius. Later in the track, Bey shuts down the idea of pitting two successful female rappers/singers against each other. “I heard they askin’ for the Queen to buy some cameras in here / I’m a bad bitch, she’s a savage, no comparisons here / I’ma flip my hair and look back while I twerk in the mirror / All this money in the room, think some scammers in here.”
Rumors of this collaboration first came via AllHipHop, which noted on Apr. 16 that “Bey and Meg are apparently putting a remix to the hit song ‘Savage’ and it’s about to be sick!” Megan, as Rolling Stone notes, signed a management deal with Roc Nation, the entertainment agency founded by Jay-Z (who is married to Beyonce. Connect the dots.) Megan’s signing with Roc Nation also triggered her legal issue with 1501 Certified Entertainment. She sued the label, got a restraining order against 1501, and was then allowed to release her Suga EP (which contains her now-viral track, “Savage.”)
This is not the first time that Beyonce and Megan “collaborated” on something before. The two closed out 2019 with a pair of photos taken at a New Year’s Eve party. Along with Beyonce’s daughter Blue Ivy, Bey and Megan posed for the camera, offering a little bit of attitude before taking a nice shot together. For Megan, it was a dream-come-true. “Everybody knows that I super-love Beyoncé,” she explained to Billboard “I’m from Houston, she’s from Houston. I’ve been listening to her all my life. I watch her talk [in older interviews] about basically going through the same struggles that I feel like I’m going through right now. If Beyoncé could get through it, I could get through it.”
One the quarantine gets lifted, Megan better cut a major check to TikTok user @keke.janajah—aka Keara Wilson – who created the #SavageChallenge, per The Daily Dot. Keara put together the now-iconic choreography to Megan’s “Savage,” and after four days of pushing for it to go viral (and trying to get Megan’s attention) the challenge took off after Ms. Thee Stallion shared it with her Instagram followers. “Me and my best friend like saw it, and I’m like, ‘we can do that,’ ” she told Jimmy Fallon on Apr. 21. Then, it practically took over the Internet after some big names participated. Keke Palmer, Marsai Martin, Jessica Alba, Normani with Ryan Destiny, and Hailey Baldwin (with twerking Justin Bieber cameo) also did it. Janet Jackson reposted a fan-made version of her “doing” the #SavageChallenge, and that left Megan dead from shock.
“I just saw Courtney Cox did it, Jessica Alba, freakin’ Janet Jackson, [Taraji P. Henson],” she said. “I was like, ‘Janet Jackson, you know me?’ And now we follow each other on Instagram. And I’m like, ‘I win.’ Janet Jackson follows me on Instagram. Everyone else can go away.”