Imprisoned in California, the Canadian rapper Tory Lanez was ordered to testify in a $10 million defamation case related to Megan Thee Stallion. But what happened was all about shenanigans, not answers.
Sitting in a prison facility and Zoomed into a deposition he'd long fought against, Lanez (birth name Daystar Peterson) opened up with his fists, not of legal defense but sarcasm, side-eyes, and surreal detours into wordplay and paranoia. The suit, brought by Megan Thee Stallion, alleges a YouTube host, Milagro Gramz (real name Milagro Cooper), has been conducting a smear campaign that claims Megan lied under oath, has an alcoholism addiction, and is mentally unwell with Lanez.
When asked straightforwardly if he understood that he was under oath, Lanez hesitated and said flatly, "No, I don't understand that." It was a tone-setting moment, and then things got even weirder.
The rapper had subsumed a simple question about whether he had prepared with his lawyer for the deposition instead of unleashing an unprovoked insult onto the attorney conducting the questioning, Mari Henderson. Then he assailed her very right even to ask, rambling conspiratorially about how he had been wrongfully convicted and railroaded by the very system now demanding his testimony.
"I want this on the record that I don't trust this woman," he declared, eyes fixed on the camera. "These are the same people that have me jailed, wrongfully convicted of a crime I didn't commit."
When Henderson attempted to bring the conversation back to the legal matter at hand, Tory swerved, yet again, into the surreal. When asked if he had met with his attorney to prepare for the deposition, he took offense with the word "meet," insisting on Webster's definition.
"Meat could be a hot dog; meat could be a steak; meat could be red meat…" he riffed, somehow linking all of these to his rambling point about watching p### and how "meat is a whole thing different there."
The legal team's frustration was observable and with good reason. What was supposed to be a fact-finding process became an intellectual filibuster laced with mockery and vagueness. Whether Lanez believed this strategy would strengthen his case or he just bore an unappeasable desire to perform, this deposition was like nothing you've seen before.
If a courtroom could hand out Emmys, Tory Lanez would've earned himself a nomination, but not the kind his legal team pursued.
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