In August, 2020, Megan Thee Stallion paid tribute to people of color who lost their lives or were seriously injured in incidents involving the police. During a virtual Live Nation concert that was performed without an audience, a message appeared on a black screen that simply stated, "This sh*t is exhausting." “Then, the names of Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and more were displayed alongside descriptions of each incident, before ending with Jacob Blake,” ET writes. She has shown support for Black Lives Matter movement, and attended a protest with Tiffany Haddish and Common in July, 2020, the entertainment site notes. "Sometimes being a public figure, you don’t wanna say the wrong thing because you don’t want to be insensitive to people or get too opinionated," she told NME . “But I will always say what I feel. I don’t speak on things that I don’t know about, and I won’t speak on things I don’t believe in.”

The year 2020 cemented Megan’s place in history. Born Megan Pete, she earned her stage name because of her height. “Since I was younger, probably about 15 or 16, I’ve always had the same body,” she said. “Older guys would always be like, Oh, you a stallion. So I finally had to ask like, is that a good thing? Everybody pretty much took it and ran with it, and then I put it as my main name on Twitter, and ever since then everybody’s just been calling me Stallion,” she explained to Houstonia. “And the H-town hottie, that’s just a nickname I gave for myself—I thought it sounded cool, so I was like, yeah, I’ll be that.”

Megan supported a venture that empowers women to continue receiving their education. She teamed up with Amazon Music’s Rap Rotation for the “Don’t Stop” scholarship. According to Teen Vogue, the scholarship was set up in October 2020 to reward two “college hotties” with cash to support their success in college. The fund is slated to award two women of color $10,000 scholarships in their pursuit of a bachelor’s, associates, or another post-graduate degree.

Megan promised her mom, who died of brian cancer in 2019, that she would graduate from college. Before her career exploded, she was a full-time college student at Prairie View A&M in her hometown of Houston, Texas. Now, she is a part-time student at Texas Southern University where she is taking online college courses, telling PEOPLE, “I’m doing it for me, but I’m also doing it for the women in my family who made me who I am today.”

The Houston sensation showed the world during peak quarantine time why she’s running the rap game with the release of “Savage.” The single bolted to the top of the charts, sparking the viral #Savage TikTok challenge around the internet. “Savage” became a certified hit when Beyoncé collaborated on the official remix, pushing it to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Besides the BET Awards for Best Collaboration, she won the Soul Train Music Award for Rhythm & Bars, the MTV Video Music Award for Best Hip-Hop Video, and the BET Hip Hop Award for Sweet 16: Best Featured Verse.

During a world-wide pandemic, Megan did not understand why politicians decided to focus on the lyrics of “WAP,” her top-charting hit with Cardi B. The single broke records on its first day of release, reaching more than 26 million views on YouTube. The single also reached the number one spot on streaming services, including iTunes, Apple Music, and Spotify. In September 2020, “WAP” became one of the only songs to rise directly to No. 1 from No. 5 on Billboard’s Rhythmic Songs chart since it was implemented in 1992. Megan told Elle Magazine she hoped to inspire more female artists to speak about their bodies and sexuality like their male counterparts.

In August 2020, she accused a male rapper of shooting her in Hollywood in July during a questionable set of circumstances that ended in his arrest, Time writes. At first, TMZ reported that Megan had been taken to the hospital from stepping on broken glass. But she disputed the account in an Instagram post, writing that she had “suffered gunshot wounds as a result of a crime that was committed against me and done with the intention to physically harm me.” BET reported recently that a judge ruled that the rapper, Tory Lanez, who denied the shooting, cannot speak publicly about the case.

In September 2020, she graced the cover of Time’s annual list of “most influential people.” She rocked a gold gown with a deep split, and wore her hair styled in a long braid that was airborne as Megan looked straight ahead into the camera. “There was something about this woman,” the Academy Award-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson wrote in the entry. “Once you discover her, you become a fan. I don’t like to put the stigma of the word strong on Black women because I think it dehumanizes us, but she has strength—strength through vulnerability. She’s lost much of her family—her mother, her father, her grandmother—yet she is the epitome of tenacity, of pulling herself up by her bootstraps.”

Megan and her "WAP" collaborator Cardi B teamed up with Cash App and Twitter following their song's historic No. 1 debut “on the Billboard Hot 100 in August to give away $1 million as a way to honor women during the viral conversation about female empowerment following the song's release, according to Billboard. "To all everyone supporting #WAP we see you!! we’re partnering with Twitter and Cash App to celebrate all the powerful women out there by giving away a total of $1 million dollars," Megan wrote on Twitter. "how can some $ help you or a woman you know right now? drop your $cashtag and use #WAPParty."

She is set to perform on March 14, 2021 at the 63rd annual Grammy Awards, where she is nominated for four awards, including for Best New Artist. The award season is considering nominees from Sept. 1, 2019 through Aug. 31, 2020. “From her no-holds-barred mixtapes to making inescapable chart-topping hits, few artists in recent history have had a more stratospheric rise than Megan Thee Stallion,” the Grammys site writes about the rising star. “Even in those early clips, one of which saw her battling male opponents in a cipher, Thee Stallion displayed the poise and fiercely unapologetic raps that would soon make her a star.” She ended the year by releasing her highly-anticipated debut album, Good News, which featured City Girls, SZA, Big Sean, 2 Chainz, the site notes, among other accomplishments.

Watch the 52nd Annual NAACP awards on BET on Saturday, March 27, 2021 at 8/7C