"There’s some? wh*res? in this house? / I said certified freak, seven? days a week / Wet a** p***y, make that pullout game weak, woo."
After Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's 'WAP (Wet A** P***y)' dropped last Friday, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, was quick to issue comment on the black-women led production. "It gets really, really, really vulgar," he said on his eponymous show, which aired on the August 10.
What followed was nothing short of cringe-induing. He recited the song's NSFW lyrics, while the music video played in the background - taking care to replace "p***y" with the "p-word" - as if uttering a popular term for the female genitalia was powerful enough to align him with libertarian values. It was painful to watch, entirely memeable, and, naturally, it went viral.
Shapiro didn't stop there. He proceeded to mansplain a reductive, tokenistic view of feminism - and went so far to implicate himself in giving his wife an STD, by quoting her "doctor" diagnosis that having a "wet a** p***y" could mean you have "bacterial vaginosis, yeast infection, or trichomonis [sic]."
"This is what feminists fought for," the 36-year-old said. "This is what the feminist movement was all about, and if you say anything differently it’s ’cause you’re a misogynist, see?"
After clips from his podcast began making the rounds on social media and attracting ridicule, Shapiro took to Twitter to clarify:
"Listen, guys. I fully explained on the show that it’s misogynistic to question whether graphic descriptions of “wet-a** p****” is empowering for women.
"'WAP' is obviously an incredibly profound statement of women’s empowerment, a la Susan B. Anthony. As I also discussed on the show, my only real concern is that the women involved — who apparently require a 'bucket and a mop' — get the medical care they require. My doctor wife’s differential diagnosis: bacterial vaginosis, yeast infection, or trichomonis."
And so, the public humiliation of Ben Shapiro was complete.
Of course, being the subject of mockery has been Shapiro's calling card since he became the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States at the age of 17 (at the time of writing, he has 7 million followers on Facebook and 3 million on Twitter, respectively), but his views are representative of the larger backlash the track has received.
The most vocal proponents of the criticism surrounding 'WAP' are, like Shapiro, right-leaning, male, and, white.
It's to be expected; two women, black to boot, who openly celebrate female sexuality, and describe the female genitalia in candid detail - bodily functions and all - would inspire repugnance in such a demographic.
Shapiro giving his unsolicited opinion on a rap track is a savvy career move.
The clip of him reciting the track's lyrics has launched countless memes, and currently has 6.3 million views on Twitter. Consequently, the outrage that Cardi B and Megan's track incited has eclipsed the fact that the music video garnered 26 million views on YouTube in its first day, thereby breaking the record for the biggest 24-hour debut for an all-female collaboration on the platform.
But it's not just the likes of Shapiro that took umbrage with WAP. In a recent interview with Far Out Magazine, CeeLo Green, an African-American rapper, namechecked Cardi B and Nicki Minaj as releasing music that is "very unfortunate and disappointing on a personal and moral level".
"There was once a time when we were savvy enough to code certain things. We could express to those it was meant for with the style of language we used. But now music is shameless, it is sheer savagery. There should be a time and a place for adult content," Green said, adding: "You have the ‘Heads of State,’ like Nicki Minaj or someone who is up there in accolade: success, visibility, a platform to influence. Nicki could be effective in so many other constructive ways, but it feels desperate."
In the interview, Green only references female rappers; thus equating their sexually explicit lyrics to the "shameless" state of the music industry.
Speaking on 'WAP', Green continued: "Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, they are all more or less doing similar salacious gesturing to kinda get into position. I get it, the independent woman and being in control, the divine femininity and sexual expression. I get it all." He then asks, "It comes at what cost?"
The irony doesn't go unnoticed. It was Green, of course, who glorified violence against women in Gnarls Barkley's 'Necromancer'. In it, he raps, "It’s naughty, very naughty necrophilia / Without a care I’m compassionate about killing her / I’d have my way with what’s left of the will of her / Cosmopolitans, and cocaine, and an occasional pill in her / When she spoke I saw a spark, but it was dark so / I drove her home when she died, sexy suicide."
While black male rappers have long incited criticism for their use of sexually explicit lyrics, it's hard to remember a time in recent years that one particular individual has been called out in the way that Cardi B and Megan have.
A 2012 Billboard article features the subheading: "The 10 hip-hop stars with the filthiest lyrics, from Lil Wayne to Akinyele to Plies, all for your nasty listening pleasure." The artists referenced are all male, and their graphic lines don't seem to render them "shameless", rather, it's the very "filthy" nature of their content that makes their music worth listening to.
Ultimately, men are able to rap about women's p******s, but those who possess them cannot.
A prime example is Lil Wayne's 2008 track, P***y Monster, in which he spits the bars: "When I lift my top lip I can still smell you / When I swallow my spit I can still taste you / Put that p***y in my face you / It goes P-*-*-*-Y because / It's the reason I am alive / Mama I need just to survive / It's like I got to eat to stay alive."
We are still uncomfortable with women expressing their sexuality, and we're even more squeamish when it comes to talking about their reproductive biology.
In popular culture, the vulva is only depicted as a flower or an aesthetically pleasing segment of fruit - tampon commercials remain clinical in their failure to depict menstrual blood - and so we infer that vaginas are something to silently possess, not something to talk about openly - whether they be dry, damp, or "wet".
