Trigger Warning:/ Mentions of rape and murder

On January 26, 2024, rapper Megan Thee Stallion released the second single off her new album; a song called “Hiss”. The track addresses many popular rappers in the industry who have said something about Megan in the past.

A specific line, “…These h**s don’t be mad at Megan, these h**s mad at Megan’s Law,” gained lots of traction due to the reaction it received from another female rapper, Nicki Minaj. There was an element of surprise due to the fact that the two had collaborated on the 2019 track “Hot Girl Summer.”

Minaj’s anger at the singular line, which did not even mention her name, raised a question amongst many; what is Megan’s Law? This was evident as the singular term saw a 500 percent increase in Google searches the day Thee Stallion’s track was released.

Google defines Megan’s Law as, “a federal law in the United States requiring law enforcement authorities to make information available to the public regarding registered sex offenders. Laws were created in response to the murder of Megan Kanka.” This is a surface-level definition.

The law centers itself around Megan Kanka, a seven-year-old girl who never got to see her eighth birthday. In 1994, she was raped and murdered by her neighbor, 33 year-old Jesse Timmendequas. Timmendequas was a registered sex offender at the time. He lived across from the Kanka family, but there was no way to know.

Kanka was lured into the man’s house at the promise of petting his new puppy. She was then raped and strangled to death. Timmendequas placed Kanka’s body in a wooden box and dumped her in a nearby park.

It only took one day for Timmendequas to admit his crimes to the police. He plead guilty to first-degree murder and sexual assault and was sentenced to the death penalty.

This tragedy stems from the fact that there was not a way to identify Timmendequas’ history as a registered sex offender. In light of this, the state of Kansas made it mandatory for local communities to be made aware of sex offenders in their area.

This was later adopted all across the United States, and there are websites scattered amongst the internet that display every offender in a desired radius.

As previously mentioned, Nicki Minaj’s anger at the line became clear when word got out that both her husband and her brother were rapists charged with the sexual assault of underage girls.

The horror that Megan Kanka and her family went through continues to be of assistance to millions across America.