Three years after an explosive, highly publicized trial, Tory Lanez, born Daystar Peterson, has broken his silence. After being found guilty of shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the foot, Lanez was sentenced to 10 years in state prison. Now, three years into his prison tenure, the rapper sat down with NBC News to publicly discuss his side of the story in his first media interview since the verdict was released in 2023.
“There is definitely a very big misconception about me that seems to the public as I’m this monster,” he told the outlet in a virtual interview. “I’ve never been violent towards a woman. I would never hit a woman, let alone shoot a woman.”
In 2022, Lanez went to trial, where he faced assault with a firearm, illegal possession of a firearm, and negligent discharge of a gun charges for his suspected involvement in a July 2020 shooting involving Megan Thee Stallion (born Megan Pete). Despite being found guilty on all the charges prosecutors have brought forward, Lanez has maintained his innocence, while his legal team filed appeals with the court.
“I feel like I was catapulted into this poster child for the un-protection of black women, and it’s just so unlike me, and I’ve never really had a chance to express that,” Lanez, who declined to testify during the trial, shared. But you can look at my criminal record. I don’t have one. I never had one. And I feel like the connotation that I would do anything of this monstrous proportion is just completely incorrect.”
In November, an appeals court affirmed Tory Lanez’s 10-year conviction, finding “no ineffective assistance of counsel or prejudicial trial court error.” However, this week, his legal team announced plans to file a new appeal to the California Supreme Court, claiming that Pete’s legal team failed to turn over hundreds of pages of the rapper’s medical records, specifically regarding the bullet fragments removed from her foot.
“I think if I would have taken the stand, the verdict would have definitely been very different…I believe not only that I was wrongfully convicted, but the amount of new evidence that has emerged since that trial, I think, has been overwhelming,” Lanez told the outlet, also announcing plans to request a pardon or clemency from California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Although Pete and her legal team have not commented on Lanez’s latest statements, the “Hot Girl Summer” rapper’s lawyer previously doubled down against Lanez’s team’s renewed efforts to undermine the conviction.
“Tory Lanez was tried and convicted by a jury of his peers, and his case was properly adjudicated through the court system,” Spiro said in a statement, as previously reported by theGrio. “Despite Mr. Lanez being convicted at trial by overwhelming evidence (that included his own admission of his guilt), he and his team—flanked by any ignorant person they can find—have pushed whatever misleading narrative they can. One by one, their misleading statements unravel and all that is left is the simple truth: he was convicted by overwhelming evidence.”
Since the trial, Megan Thee Stallion has spoken up about how the situation and subsequent harassment online impacted her mental health. When asked what he would say to Megan Thee Stallion today, Lanez told the NBC News reporter, “I think that I wouldn’t say something directly to her. I would like that moment to happen in person. We’ve both gone through a lot.
“There’s this connotation that I share this hatred for her, but I don’t. I’m genuinely past that. I’m at a place of healing in my life. I’m at a place of taking accountability for the things that I did wrong,” he continued. “And when I talk about my case, I don’t want it to be taken as me coming at her. Because it’s not that I’m just asking for somebody in the system to look at my case and look at the evidence and ask if this was fair.”
