WAP: The Incurable Disease
by Ema Vuthi
Freshman, Undeclared Major
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WHAT IS, AS THE KIDS SAY, A WAP?
“WAP,” aka ‘wet ass pussy,’ is a collaboration between rappers Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion released on August 6, 2020. It has not been very long since the release of the iconic song, but the three-letter acronym would forever become a staple in our minds since its initial release. Now, I love Megan Thee Stallion and this song... a lot. Unfortunately, I’m not here to gush about her and how much I enjoy her music, but rather to examine the impact that this song had upon its release as well as why it garnered so much attention in the first place. My goal is to try and explain why this dirty rap song dominated the world even though Cardi, Megan, and other rappers’ catalogs of music contain just as dirty, if not dirtier, lyrics and why sexuality in women, especially Black women, is deemed unacceptable when dictated by themselves.
CONTEXT:
As a disclaimer, I am a huge rap fan– I enjoy listening to rappers of all genders, as their gender identity is not something that would “turn me off” from tuning in. However, it is absolutely no secret that the rap industry is 1. Dominated by men and 2. Constantly objectifies, sexualizes, and commodifies the bodies of Black women. Whether or not the misogyny is satire, a throwaway lyric, or a genuine sexist ideology put into a song, it still shapes how we, the audience, view women’s places in the industry as well in our everyday lives. Don’t get me wrong, when “Colt 45” by Afroman comes, I get hyped and sing along, so I am not above the blatant misogyny. There is an over-saturation of misogynoir and even a standard of it in the lyrics and visuals making it so hard to ignore. I mean, if I decided to cut every single song out of my liked songs folder that contains a lyric I find offensive towards women or even queer folk, my song library would be cut a decent amount. There is only a certain extent to which I can blame the individual artist because of 3 key factors: patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy.
PART ONE: COME TAKE A DIVE
We are immediately greeted with “there’s some whores in this house,” and I think this truly sets the tone for the next 3 minutes of the listening experience. There’s no hidden meaning, nothing to be deciphered, just Cardi and Megan rapping about sex and their desires in clever ways. They go back and forth as they’re carried by the simple beat and even reclaim the title of a “whore” by the sample they utilized. The lyrics themselves contain a bunch of great bars that constantly roam through my head, like many other Megan Thee Stallion lyrics. Honestly, the song really isn’t far off of what Megan has been rapping about years prior. In fact, not that far off from a song like “How Many Licks?” by Lil Kim, which was released waaaaaaaaay before Megan or Cardi got on the scene. Negative reception from people like Ben Shapiro, a really conservative political commentator, was inevitable (and very funny), but pushback from someone like Snoop Dogg perfectly captures the hypocrisy of the standards in rap. Snoop Dogg is notorious for his explicit lyrics, with sex and the perusal of women being large themes he incorporates in his music.
Snoop’s take on WAP during a conversation with Julissa Bermudez on the TV show Central Ave was, “Let’s have some, you know, privacy, some intimacy where he wants to find out as opposed to you telling him...that’s like your pride and possession, that’s your jewel of the Nile. That’s what you should hold onto. That should be a possession that no one gets to know about until they know about it. ” He continues with, “as an older man, I love it that they’re expressing themselves and doing their thing, I just don’t want it that fashionable to where young girls feel like they can express themselves like that without even knowing that that is a jewel that they hold onto until the right person comes around.” Now, I don’t want to put words into Snoop Dogg’s mouth but, it feels as if he is okay with the raw sexuality of women when they are accessories to him and his art, he is okay when he can control and profit. Referring to Cardi and Megan’s, uh, WAPs as a “jewel of the Nile,” insinuates that the sexuality of women should hide this aspect about them unless in the bedroom due to its “value,” but men? Men can flail that shit around as much as they like. There’s a huge double standard, and it just goes to show that the “issue” isn’t about privacy, but about control. We want a freak, but we don’t want a SLUT.
Snoop Dogg isn’t the face of misogyny in the rap industry or even the originator, as this kind of degradation is incentivized and certainly expected. He is still a Black man living under a capitalist, racist patriarchy, so it would be extremely regressive to put the entirety of the blame on him and not the system that rewards misogyny, especially misogynoir. Like, he could’ve been way worse in his statement about the song and I can see where he is coming from... but barely. I do not want to further the vilification of Black men, but there is accountability that needs to be put on people like Snoop because of the harmful messages he’s sent in his music and in that particular quote. It is just so odd of the person who made the boundary-pushing, iconic 1993 album “Doggystyle” (a personal favorite, by the way) and rapped the lines “When I met you, last night baby before you opened up your gap, I had respect for ya lady, but now I take it all back cause you gave me all your pussy and ya even licked my balls” NOW has an issue with two objectively attractive women rapping about what he claims to love because it will apparently be a bad influence on younger women. He explains how if he was younger he would’ve probably been on the remix, so it’s fine to assume his personal opinion has shifted, but he has already profited and made a whole career out of exploiting Black women, even if he truly doesn’t adhere to or believe in the lyrics he wrote years ago. If “WAP” is suddenly going to cause women to “hand the jewel out everywhere,” then what was Snoop Dogg doing when he made “Ain’t No Fun (If The Homies Can’t Have None)” which is all about, well, exactly what you think it is about based on the title.
“WAP” was made out to be some sort of crazy psychological operation that took over the minds of all women and turned them into these monsters...or something. I can only speak for myself, but the most “WAP” does is give me a sense of confidence, it tells me that a LOT of us are “freak bitches” (Megan’s words) and it’s completely okay to own that, to speak up and take pride of their desires during sexual situations because, for a majority of people, we have these urges! And for women, it feels like we’ve been socialized to be sex dolls, I mean, it’s a big joke that “men can’t find the clit,” so what is wrong with encouraging some communication for something that is a mutual effort? The kind of sexual liberation that works for Megan and Cardi as individuals happen to be making a raunchy and explicit song about what they want in a heterosexual sexual encounter. How a woman decides to express her sexuality through a form of art should not be dictated by anyone else because it is truly up to the individual (there are limits, but “WAP” is harmless and more on a playful side, I think). We want to see women who look exactly like Megan and Cardi shake ass, but not when they do it on their terms for their own music.
PART TWO: GOBBLE ME SWALLOW ME
I want to take it back to something I touched on, that being the 3 key factors of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. The only reason why “WAP” was such a big deal is because of the patriarchy. If we didn’t have these social constructs about gender, sex, and sexuality as well as repressive standards for women, “WAP” wouldn’t have hit the scene as hard as it did. Guillermo Rebollo-Gil and Amanda Moras perfectly explain the intricacies of the industry in their excerpt “Black Women and Black Men in Hip-Hop Music: Misogyny, Violence, and the Negotiation of (White-Owned) Space” from the 2012 The Journal of Popular Culture. “Rap has always been feminine,” they explain, “what it has not been is pro-woman... she is something men rappers love, something they do. She does not act; she is acted upon.” This idea that women should sit back and wait to be acted upon rather than act on their wants not only makes the entirety of “WAP” subversive but only because we have been taught that a woman taking charge, of any situation, isn’t what they should do. Women are seen almost as hobbies, something that you “do” on the side, ignoring the obvious fact that everyone, regardless of gender, is more than their sexual value in the eyes of societal expectations.
They also mention how the voices of Black women in the music industry are frequently silenced while the perspectives of their male counterparts are favored and actually funded. It’s not that there aren’t aspiring women in rap, but they aren’t given the same opportunities because they have to excel in the craft while male artists who share similarities in each other's music can co-exist on the same level of success. I remember when Cardi B came on the scene, she was and still is compared to Nicki Minaj when their style and voices are incredibly different. The music industry is abundantly white, just like the movie industry and many other institutions, entertainment or not, that aid in systematic racism. It is reminiscent of how Spike Lee, a film director, “sacrificed” the bodies of Black women on screen for his success as a Black man to appeal to a mass audience. The intricacies of this issue are much more than Snoop Dogg or Spike Lee, as they are only a small part of a much larger issue. “WAP” stands for more than wet ass pussy, as it is a testament to the way we as a society continue to contradict the way we view women and how there needs to be more forms of media that accept and listen to the perspectives of Black women. Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B are not the first Black women to reach this level of fame and popularity in the rap game, but what they did with “WAP” was admirable and they indirectly restarted an important conversation that needs to be had.
CONCLUSION: W(R)APPING IT UP
I won’t sit here and say that “WAP” doesn’t elicit a response from me, stuff like “I do a kegel while it's inside” still makes me giggle because of its absurdity... but that’s the whole point! “WAP” is a fun song that is supposed to garner a shocked response by the detail they go into, if it wasn’t, the title would’ve been way more subtle or at least a euphemism instead of an acronym. I mean, if you didn’t know what a “WAP” was, you’d ask the question and definitely get an answer. It is perfectly fine to be indifferent to the song, music is incredibly subjective and I can’t take that away from anyone. Viewing “WAP” through a critical lens, or any form of art, is encouraged, but there is a clear difference between not liking a song and/or artist because of their musical style, their flow, their aesthetics, their voice, etc. versus being worked up about some sexy time lyrics through the perspective of two individual women. At the end of the day, Megan and Cardi laughed their way to the bank with a #1 hit while Ben Shapiro publicly admitted to not being able to give his wife a WAP, so at least the people who I wanted to win this metaphorical battle won.
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