Some clever people have brought handheld electric fans. Some have brought the analogue fold-out type. Others use whatever is to hand: baseball caps, concertinaed bits of A4, homemade signs, the larger mobile phone models. The American rapper Megan Thee Stallion (the second “e” is silent) acknowledges the sauna-like temperatures in this packed venue and is quick to take the credit. “It’s hot in this motherfucker,” she laughs. “That’s ’cos we’re doing real hot-girl shit!”
She’s not wrong. Megan Thee Stallion surged out of hip-hop’s online battlegrounds and into the collective consciousness in 2019 with the song Hot Girl Summer, a co-production with the trailblazing female rapper Nicki Minaj that coined a new, Instagram meme-derived spin on female empowerment – assertiveness with a twerk and a wink. Thee Stallion had a sassy signature move to go with it too: sticking her tongue out and “bleh”-ing, managing to convey lasciviousness, disdain and a sense of humour all at the same time.
