Why Men Are So Bothered by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s ‘WAP’

Your patriarchy is showing, sir

Demetria L. Lucas
LEVEL

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Photo: YouTube/Cardi B

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During the wee hours of Friday morning, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion dropped the song and music video for their much-anticipated collaboration “WAP” — which, in case you haven’t figured it out by now, is a filthy acronym. It’s more shit-talking than Shakespeare, but there are quotables galore. “Punani Dasani.” “Swipe your nose like a credit card.” “Let him taste it, now he’s diabetic.” There’s a semi-truck horn that comes at the perfect time. It’s a fun, funny, and ridiculous song in the way that songs boasting about sexual prowess often are.

It’s nothing we haven’t heard before. Missy Elliott, Foxy Brown, Trina, Lady Saw, and Lil’ Kim — to whom Meg and Cardi pay homage in the video via a stone fountain of themselves posed in the iconic Hard Core spread-eagle squat — were boasty about the power of the pussy and lyrically loose-lipped about their sexual exploits 25 years ago. So was Adina Howard, a self-proclaimed “freak,” and before her, a long list of women, including Millie Jackson and Ma Rainey, who were equally explicit about their sexual desires and expectations.

Men boasting about…

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Demetria L. Lucas
LEVEL
Writer for

The voice of Ratchet & Respectable podcast and the author or “Don’t Waste Your Pretty”.