Megan Thee Stallion playing a Tunnel reunion with Funk Flex, Super Bowl shows, fests, and more

Megan Thee Stallion is gearing up to follow her great 2019 album Fever with her new album Suga this year, and she recently released that album’s lead single “B.I.T.C.H.” and revealed the album will would feature SZA and Kehlani and be produced by Juicy J. She also continues to expand her tour schedule.

Megan’s playing Coachella, Bonnaroo, Rolling Loud Miami, Buku, Hangout, Broccoli City, two Super Bowl week events (Bud Light Super Bowl Music Fest on 1/30 with DJ Khaled, DaBaby, and Meek Mill; and day one [1/31] of Vewtopia, which also features Cardi B, Migos, DaBaby, and more on day two), and more.

In the midst of all that, Megan will come to NYC for a one-night-only ‘Return of The Tunnel‘ party at Avant Gardner on Sunday, February 23 with Funk Flex. Megan is too young to have gone to the actual Tunnel in the ’90s, but Funk Flex did host and DJ the legendary weekly hip hop night on Sundays at the Manhattan club that was owned by Peter Gatien who will also be in attendance at this Bushwick event! Peter — who also owned Limelight, Club USA and Palladium, but was deported back to Canada after they were all famously shut down — also has a new memoir coming out soon. Tickets for the Brooklyn event are on sale now. Check out the flyer below.

And for a longer primer on Funk Flex’s hip hop nights at The Tunnel, here’s an excerpt from a New York Magazine piece from 1999 on those parties:

Welcome to New York’s hardest of hard-core hip-hop parties, where shoes are inspected for drugs and weapons, ballpoint pens are contraband, and fights decide hit records. “It’s thug paradise in here,” says D.J. Cipha Sounds, who, along with Funkmaster Flex, provides the Tunnel’s soundtrack on Sunday nights. “This is the toughest crowd in the world. The Tunnel is like boot camp for D.J.’s.”

It serves as a kind of boot camp for the hip-hop industry too. “Music-industry executives go to the Tunnel to play catch-up with the streets,” says Gabrielle Peluso, a publicist at Def Jam Records. The Tunnel’s street-cred stamp is invaluable to multi-platinum artists like Nas, Puff Daddy, and Method Man. The gritty black-and-white clip for DMX’s “Get At Me Dog” was shot here in February 1997; soon after, the rapper’s CD It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, effectively ending the Puff Daddy-dominated “jiggy” era and paving the way for the crossover success of street rhymers like Noreaga (whose “Superthug” is a Tunnel anthem) and Jay-Z (whose “Money, Cash, Hoes” dictum is spray-painted on a banner at the club).

“This is the Apollo, but on a hip-hop level,” boasts Born True, of Flex’s Big Dawg street team.

Megan isn’t the only modern-day rapper involved in some Tunnel nostalgia. Wiki (who recently announced a tour) also paid homage to it on his great 2017 single “Pretty Bull.”

In other Megan Thee Stallion news, she and Phony Ppl are set to officially release their collab song “Fkn Around” this Friday (1/31). The song was originally debuted in an NPR Tiny Desk Concert. You can watch the video of that concert, stream Megan’s new single “B.I.T.C.H.,” see her full list of tour dates, and check out the poster for the Tunnel party, below.

UPDATE (1/31): “Fkn Around” is out now:

Megan Thee Stallion — 2020 Tour Dates
JAN 30 Miami, FL American Airlines Arena (Bud Light Super Bowl Music Fest)
FEB 01 Miami, FL Marlins Park (Vewtopia)
FEB 23 Brooklyn, NY Avant Gardner (Return of The Tunnel)
MAR 14 South Padre Island, TX Clayton’s Beach Bar
MAR 20 New Orleans, LA BUKU Music + Art Project
MAR 28 Columbus, GA Columbus Civic Center
APR 10 Indio, CA Coachella
APR 17 Indio, CA Coachella
MAY 08 Miami Gardens, FL Rolling Loud
MAY 09 Washington, DC Broccoli City Fest
MAY 15 Gulf Shores, AL Hangout Fest
JUN 12 Manchester, TN Bonnaroo