When it comes to writing a verse on RuPaul’s Drag Race, Megami’s pen never misses.
We mean that literally. Megami has written or co-written four verses so far on the franchise, and each has resulted in a queen winning their respective episode, including the All Stars 11 premiere song, “Break Dancin’ 2: Electric Rugaloo,” which saw Megami’s season 16 sister Dawn triumph alongside Morgan McMichaels. Megami’s songwriting skills have become legend among the Drag Race fandom; not only have her verses amassed four wins, they’ve done so in essentially two years’ worth of seasons.
If you’re looking to write a great Ru verse — we’re talking to you, season 19 queens! — leave behind the cliches about “snatching the crown” and other hallmarks of the genre. Focusing on your brand and making sure that the audience leaves with something quotable is key. A verse is not just a list of lines; it’s a puzzle to be figured out.
“The secret really is you got to talk in quotes,” Megami tells Out over Zoom as she’s readying for a gig away from her New York City home. “Each line should be something that people can remember.”
Head, Megami discusses the art of making the perfect verse, why she’s happy to help out her sisters for free, and how close we almost got to hearing a “C.L.A.T.” part two.
Megami arrives at the 2024 Critics Choice Real TV Awards at Fairmont Century Plaza on June 15, 2024 in Los Angeles, CaliforniaSteve Granitz/FilmMagic
Before we get to the verses, how are you enjoying All Stars 11?
Well, as someone who wants to get back on the show, I love it. I think it's such a great season of RuPaul's Drag Race now streaming on Paramount+ every Friday. The show has never been better.
I love this show dearly and I love so many of the girls on it. Now that season 16 has reached the point of getting invited back to All Stars, I get to watch my sisters go through this and cheer for them. I am just so excited to see Dawn, Morphine, and Hershey back on TV more than anything else. Those are my girls, I will root for them to the end of time. We started it out with the best bracket because two of my sisters are there. The bracket format is not my favorite thing in the world. But you know what? We're here. We're queer. I’ve gotten used to it. We keep coming back to this show because even at its worst, it's amazing.
You recently appeared on the podcast Pressed Conference and you talked about collabing with Dawn for her All Stars 11 verse. You said it should’ve won a Pulitzer, then revealed yourself as a co-writer. How did that collab come about?
There’s certain things that they let the girls know ahead of time. Because it's such a tight turnaround, you don't want to waste time with the girls in the room just like sitting scribbling on their pads. They get a little extra time before to come up with stuff. She had come up with a bunch of lines that she wanted in the verse, like, you know, “Bodied by ‘Body,’” because she went home to the song “Body” by Megan Thee Stallion. And “doodoo clown mess,” which is from her fight with Plane Jane. She had all these ideas and jokes. I went through them with her and figured out how to, like a puzzle, how are we going to piece all of your ideas together and come up with something that rhymes, but also fits in the time slot and makes sense.
That's the puzzle of verse writing: you have your brand and all these quotes and sayings that you're known for. How do we fit this into a cohesive verse that's not going to embarrass both of us? Apparently, apparently we did a good job.
What else do you think goes into writing a good Ru verse?
A Ru verse is not just a regular rap verse on a song. You're one of however many girls who are on this track with you. In a normal rap song, you may make one whole song about one subject. But you have to boil everything down into like eight bars. The secret really is you got to talk in quotes. Each line should be something that people can remember. Each line should be something that people can quote.
You don't want to say generic stuff. Whenever the girls are like mentioning “the crown,” like, “Hey, Mama Ru, I’m coming for the crown,” No, this is generic. No one's going to remember that. You want to have something that boils down your personality into like eight lines that people can quote. You want people to remember what your verse is.
Even with Nymphia [Wind], Nymphia was the same thing. She had written a list of things that she wanted in the verse, like “breaking wind.”
Vote yellow.
Vote yellow, banana fever, all these things that are like, “This is my brand.” These are the quotable aspects of my personality.
On our season, I had already come in with a verse prewritten for myself, which a lot of girls do. At least half of the girls who participated in that girl group challenge had those verses pre-made.
A lot of the songs are very — you can do these verses because they're interchangeable. My verse that originally I wrote for my audition for season 13 or 14 was for the song “Kitty Girl.” I have a video of me performing “down on my knees, bitch, pray to me,” in a chunk of “Kitty Girl.” They can be moved around. That's what allowed me to help Nymphia because like I was just done already.
Really, you just want the fans to be able to quote it back to you because then it's iconic.
Since you wrote a verse to “Kitty Girl,” what song challenge from another season would you want to write an original verse for?
My favorite Rumix of all time, maybe controversially, more so than “Read U Wrote U,” is “Category Is.” I feel like all four of them are iconic and everyone can quote the entire thing.
I think mine would be “Lucky,” it doesn’t sound like a normal Ru song.
“Lucky” feels like it's in a different tempo or like a different meter. Another one I was thinking of is the “Oh No She Betta Don’t” from season six, which is the spiritual predecessor to the one they just did on All Stars. “Oh No She Betta Don’t” is fucking iconic. Adore Delano, Darienne Lake’s iconic verse, Milk! What is her line? “If you're looking for a dude or in the preggers mood.” Genius.
Do you have a history in songwriting? Did you used to write down raps or lyrics when you were younger?
I've always been into music. I've always listened to rap. I'm from Brooklyn. We grow up listening to rap because that's what everyone is playing. I'm a huge fan of Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Doja. I used to be a fan of She Who Shall Not Be Named.
I look at it as making a poem out of sassy gay quotes that just happened to fit into a rapping meter. It’s not the same thing as what Megan or Cardi are doing. We're trying to make the most quotable eight-bar verse you can possibly think of. You don't have space to put a lot of filler shit in there. Girls who like end up talking about, “I'm getting the crown” and “I'm the baddest bitch” — say something specific to you. These verses are so short. I call organizing the chaos. There's a bit to quote, here's a bunch of lines that I'm known for and how do I put this together but make it rhyme? It's like writing a Dr. Seuss book. It's less the musicality of it and more, “Hey, let's put this puzzle together but make it rhyme.”
You just named a lot of like rappers that inspire you. I don't know if you saw that The New York Times just did a list of like the "30 Greatest Living American Songwriters." Who is your greatest living songwriter?
My greatest songwriter of all time will always and forever be my mother, Stephanie Joanne Angelina Germanatta, otherwise known as Lady Gaga. I'm trying to think of who else I would put on that list for me. Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey, growing up, I listened to a lot of Missy Elliott too. Missy was that bitch. She was an underappreciated master of words. Gaga will always be my number one in terms of how to make depression really cunty and that's what I love.
You and I are both on the same crusade and I've seen you post about it a lot: When are they going to release the “ASMR Lover” remix?
Well, I'm not allowed to be on that crusade. We don't talk about it. So I don't know. I have brought it up in the past. She's lost to the annals of history. But people love her. More than anything, we need to get me, Mhi’ya, Geneva, and Nymphia in the same place at the same time to perform it again. That would be iconic. We'll do the live version.
Or you could team up as Thick and Stick and do your own “C.L.A.T.”
This is one of the things that pisses me off. I love my sisters down, especially my New York sisters. My season had an abundance of New York City girls. I think there were five of us, now technically six, since Amanda moved to New York. I was trying to get the girls together, but it's like herding cats to get a bunch of drag queens to all sit down and figure something out. I really wanted to do “C.L.A.T.” part two.
I found a producer, and was like, “Bitches, please, I will literally just write everything for you. Just show up.” But it was not meant to be this time. But you know, I'm not bitter about it at all. Even though, you know, this will be in text. You can hear the bitterness in my voice. Just write a subtitle: “Not bitter.”
One thing I wanted to add too. When the girls come to me, I never charge them money for it. I've never asked for money. Cause I'm like, you know what? If I want 500 bucks, I'll just go do a fucking gig. That's not a problem. I can make money anywhere. Like for me, the most valuable part of collaborating with the girls and doing this is the recognition and attention. In the current social media landscape, where there's a billion things happening all at once, attention is the most valuable thing you can get. Anything that helps show people that I'm someone that they should be paying attention to, maybe I should have another shot at doing the show again. That's why I do it. I just want the Powers That Be to see that I'm not even on the show and I've been helping people win challenges.
This is my favorite show in the world. I love Drag Race. And even if in this small little way, I get to keep being a part of it. That's the best form of payment I can ask for. Hopefully the girls keep reaching out. I have an untarnished record. So, if you wanna win a challenge, you know who to ask. 'Cause I haven't failed yet.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
