Meghan Thee Stallion's Roc Steady & The Industry's Child Exploitation Problem

If Americans truly care about protecting children, then the protests should not just be aimed at individual abusers alone. | Photo Credit: Be Well & Co.

Megan Thee Stallion, Warner Music Group, and the Audacity to Target Minors Is NOT a Good Look for Her Career...Irrespective of How Much We Love Megan Thee Stallion.

Megan Thee Stallion’s latest music video, Roc Steady featuring Flo Milli, is not just another raunchy rap anthem—it’s a disturbing statement about the priorities of the modern music industry. The video, set in a high school, features Megan and her dancers dressed as minor high school cheerleaders—but with uniforms that are barely more than thongs. The video is filled with vulgar lyrics, explicit sexual themes, and depictions of violence, including scenes of Megan murdering Black men dressed in 90s hip-hop attire.

The real outrage isn’t just about the content of the song—it’s about the deliberate decision to film this in a space designated for minors and marketed toward children. This isn’t an accident. This shift in Megan’s branding comes immediately after signing with Warner Music Group (WMG)—a company long-entrenched in scandal, corruption, and industry-wide exploitation.

Warner Music Group: A Legacy of Scandal and Corruption

Warner Music Group is no stranger to controversy. As one of the Big Three record labels (alongside Sony and Universal), WMG has a long history of profiting from artists’ downfalls, legal troubles, and even criminal activity. Let’s take a walk down memory lane:

• The Payola Scandal: In 2005, Warner was forced to pay $5 million to settle a pay-for-play investigation that exposed their under-the-table payments to radio stations to promote their artists.

  
  

• R. Kelly’s Continued Success Under Warner: Despite growing allegations against him, R. Kelly continued to thrive under Warner’s distribution. They had no issue making money from his music—until public pressure forced them to act.

  
  

• Ed Sheeran’s Copyright Lawsuits: Warner’s golden boy has faced multiple copyright infringement cases, with many pointing to the company’s willingness to protect theft and plagiarism.

  
  

• Diddy’s Empire and Warner’s Role: Sean “Diddy” Combs built Bad Boy Records under WMG’s umbrella, and now, as the scandal surrounding trafficking, abuse, and exploitation within his empire explodes, WMG has conveniently distanced itself from Sean Combs during the current legal cases, while simultaneously marketing the exact inappropriate content, inside same/similar inappropriate settings designated for minor children with Megan Thee Stallion's Roc Steady featuring Flo Milli, that gave Sean Combs the industry creditability to influence and exploit young people and aspiring artist—several known to be children at the time.

Where is the line for protecting Americans, especially American children? Is it when we see the circumstances which have historically led to injuries or is it after its too late to prevent another injury, for our temporal, sensational entertainment purposes of scapegoating an individual, while actively supporting entire networks who have documented same and similar business practices?

And now, with Megan Thee Stallion under their control, WMG is once engaging in the same exploitation just in comparative moderation to the accusations against Sean Combs—one that specifically targets and grooms children into accepting hypersexualized, violent content.

At 29 years old, Megan Thee Stallion would have traditionally graduated from a high-school such as the one she's spanking bare buttock's in the music video Roc Steady a decade prior.

Most Americans wouldn't allow their high school children to date someone who graduated a decade prior due to the different levels or maturity and activities, so why are Americans allowing such an individual to shoot music videos available to minors on public music platforms such as YouTube featuring those mature topics and activities inside a high-school, wearing high-school cheer leading uniforms?

Moreover, if unprotected minor children mirror the behaviors viewed in a music video specifically set in their child-space who really is at fault when there was no advocacy of protection set up for them?

Megan Thee Stallion: A Willing Participant?

Megan’s involvement in this project is particularly perplexing and hypocritical given her own past experiences with media and industry manipulation. Let’s not forget the Tory Lanez shooting:

• In 2020, Megan accused rapper Tory Lanez of shooting her in the foot, leading to a highly publicized trial.

  
  

• Throughout the case, she spoke extensively about the harm of media narratives, how misinformation affected her mental health, and how the industry often disregards Black women’s pain.

  
  

• Yet now, she’s starring in a video where she herself is glorifying the murder of Black men, dressed scantily clad, using vulgar, confrontational language disregarding the vulnerability of children—all set inside of a high school setting, no less.

  
  

The shift in Megan’s branding—from a sexually confident adult artist to someone blatantly targeting minors—happened only after she signed with Warner Music Group. This isn’t a coincidence.

The Money Behind It All

It’s always about money and control. Warner Music Group, like all major labels, doesn’t just create artists—they manufacture cultural movements. They know exactly what they’re doing when they push sexually explicit content in spaces that should be safe for children.

• Warner, like Roc Nation (Jay-Z’s entertainment company, which once managed Megan), understands the power of controversy. The more shocking, the more viral, the more money flows in.

• This isn’t about artistic expression—it’s about industrialized exploitation.

• Meanwhile, Megan is making no efforts to explain why she chose to film this in a children’s setting.

Where Is the Outrage?

America cannot have it both ways. If we are outraged about Sean Combs’ alleged abuses, if we want justice for children harmed by the entertainment industry, then where is the backlash against Warner and Megan Thee Stallion for this high-school video shoot?

Why is it that only after signing with a major industry giant, Megan suddenly begins pushing content in spaces meant for minors? Why are entire industries built around desensitizing young audiences to hypersexualization and violence?

If Americans truly care about protecting children, then the protests should not just be aimed at individual abusers alone—they should be aimed at the corporations funding, marketing, and profiting from this system.

It seems like, we in the United States, have selectively subscribed to unjustified, preventable, exposure and harm to other Americans of all ages, across all walks of life and on sorts of issues as if we want a better, healthier and more successful society but we don't want the responsibility of becoming accountable for our own behavior and "debt" of civil duty required for the freedoms enjoyed in the USA as designed by its founding fathers.

Hopefully, this model, which places our nation in its current dysfunctional condition will not become the death of us all. The is much to repair in the USA; we have to begin somewhere. It seems that a consensus on protecting American children is a reasonable place to begin.

The time for selective outrage is over. Either America protects children, or it profits off their exploitation. We can politized and debate rights all day long but our actions will define our character and that character will define our worth as a nation.

It seems rather simple to agree on legislation that prevents adults from creating artistic content (such as the video below) in children's settings such as schools if doesn't tell a useful story about that school or childhood experience.