Cardi B’s greatest hit
If you want to read evidence of the republic’s further slide into “Idiocracy”-squared, please see this.
We’ve come a long way, baby, and it’s not in the right direction. I can’t say I’ve paid special attention to the lyrics of Cardi B’s previous oeuvre, but her recent interview with Joe Biden and the reaction to it made me take a deeper look (see the above link for what I’m talking about).
Her recent hit is called WAP. I’m not going to translate, but I’ll just say it’s not about wanting to hold your hand. It’s not just vulgar, it’s filthy, degrading, disgusting – the sort of thing you get in your spam email where the title is purposely misspelled in an attempt to evade the filter and lead you to a porno site.
I think Biden’s handlers decided that an interview with Cardi B would be just the thing because of her enormous popularity, which is hard to overestimate:
Recognized by Forbes as one of the most influential female rappers of all time, Cardi B is known for her aggressive flow and candid lyrics, which have received widespread media coverage. She is the highest-certified female rapper of all time on the RIAA’s Top Artists (Digital Singles) ranking, also appearing among the ten highest-certified female artists and having the top certified song by a female rap artist. She is the only female rapper with multiple billion-streamers on Spotify. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, seven Billboard Music Awards, five Guinness World Records, four American Music Awards, eleven BET Hip Hop Awards and two ASCAP Songwriter of the Year awards. In 2018, Time included her on their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Cardi B has further been credited for supporting and uniting female rappers in the music industry.
The song WAP was praised for its “sex-positive” message. I suppose you could say it’s positive about sex in the same sense that any porn that is devoid of affection or love and that deals with the totally physical side of things is “sex-postive.” Those who like the song seem to think it’s just fabulous that now women are singing about sex in the same debased way male rappers have been singing about it for ages.
That’s progress, folks. Women are now free to be just as gross as men at their worst. What is especially destructive is that the market for this is teenagers. Maybe even children, for all I know. It’s probably not pitched for them, but what’s to stop them from seeing it, except hyper vigilant parents?
In an interview with Australian breakfast radio show presenters Kyle and Jackie O, Cardi, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, has spoken out about the backlash – and it’s fair to say she isn’t too concerned.
“The people that the song bothers are usually, like, conservatives or really religious, big religious people,” the star said.
Gee, what a surprise!
More:
“But my thing is that… I grew up listening to this type of music, so other people might [think it’s] strange and vulgar but to me it’s like, really normal.”
Cardi B was born in 1992, so I suppose that’s the case. Another depressing thought.
Cardi, who has a two-year-old daughter with rapper Offset, continued: “It’s like no, of course I don’t want my child to listen to this song and everything, but it’s like… it’s for adults!”
Yes, you can put blocks on the computer, but not everyone does that, and kids know other kids with access to all sorts of forbidden things. You, Cardi B, have put this out in the world and you are responsible for it. It’s not just children who are harmed by it.
But here’s her rationalization, which I think is interesting:
The rapper said the song must be doing something right, saying “it’s what people want to hear”.
She added: “Because if people didn’t want to hear it, if they were so afraid to hear it, it wouldn’t be doing as good.”
So feeding the worst aspects of human nature means you’re doing something right. I guess you are, if you measure such things in terms of your income and fame.
And I think this final sentence of the interview is humorous, in a bitter way, considering who is speaking:
“I have a whole list of things that I want our next president to do for us,” she said. “But first, I just want Trump out. His mouth gets us in trouble so much.”
[NOTE: Speaking of “greatest hit,” there’s this:
…[W]ith 93 million, the streaming sum for “WAP” is the greatest ever for a song in its first week of release.
That’s where we’re at. The sexual revolution, feminism, family decline, the hookup culture – I could go on and on, but you get the picture.]
The absurd and grotesque Lena Dunham posted a video of herself dancing to this “song”, the video of which is utterly without merit aesthetically, lyrically, and musically, while the talented country singer Margo Price has done an acoustic version with the original “words.” Such is the state of popular culture in our nation, and woe betide anyone white (or male) who criticizes such garbage, but could any educated and well-informed voter, given a choice between Candace for Trump and Cardi for Biden (the two having been in a recent battle on Twitter), truly regard the latter as more sensible?
So, out curiosity, I looked up the lyrics.
Wow! There is no clever double entendre at all. It’s just self-degradading filth.
“The prosecutor in the first Scottsboro trial said the jury must be doing something right, saying ‘it’s what people want to hear’.”
I’m so old I remember when George Michael released a song called ‘I Want Your Sex’ in 1987 and there was a huge controversy and he had to release a statement to be played before the video aired.
By today’s standard that was a nursery rhyme.
Thanks to that misspent youth I’ve referenced before, I’ve done and said things that probably would make some of the regulars here shudder, and even I think this is a bit much. Normally you have to pay if you want to hear a woman say anything this crude.
On the plus side, it is definitely hetero in nature – it’s nice to see that some Millennials are still old school enough to apparently appreciate actual sex, with the opposite sex.
I have avoided rap entirely, but I did know that male rappers tend to treat women as objects for male gratification. Sad that Cardi B thinks only “religious” people think this kind of thing is not good for women and how they are treated.
And Kamala Harris says she’s “proud” of Jacob Blake, who got shot because he violated a protective order and resisted arrest.
Apparently the idea that women who are not professional sex workers should be treated with respect is gone.
That purveyors of rap can sell the stuff is a secure indicator that Idiocracy is Now.
The absurd and grotesque Lena Dunham posted a video of herself dancing to this “song”,
Got Brain Bleach?
https://radaronline.com/photos/lena-dunham-flaunts-bikini-body-charity/
This old school guy just read the lyrics.
I’m gasping. Simply GASPING.
But, hey, she’s not a Trump Fan.
Well, DDuuuuuuuhhhhh….!!!
Kate,
And don’t forget that Obama invited these male rappers to the WH.
I’ve been watching political campaigns for nigh on to 70 years. I have never seen anything like this one. Are the Democrats in charge trying to throw the election? I think most likely is that the guys in charge are intensely partisan zero talent operators. They’re like the dog that finally caught the car. Now what?
I long for the Old Testament God, the fire and brimstone God, to make His appearance.
Roy Lofquist (6:06 pm) said:
“Are the Democrats in charge trying to throw the election? . . . They’re like the dog that finally caught the car. Now what?”
— — — — —
Conquest’s third law of politics: “The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”
Cardi B’s depravity is only exceeded by the leaders of those organizations who have celebrated her. She’ll probably get a ticker tape style parade upon her entrance to hell. One of Jezebel’s acolytes.
M J R: It’s hard to forgive Conquest for being so right! I love this Conquest tidbit:
___________________________________
When Conquest’s publisher asked him to expand and revise “The Great Terror” [under Stalin], Conquest is famously said to have suggested the new version of the book be titled “I Told You So, You F***ing Fools.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Conquest
Cap’n Rusty:
Be careful what you wish for.
huxley (8:48 pm) tidbitted:
“When Conquest’s publisher asked him to expand and revise ‘The Great Terror’ [under Stalin], Conquest is famously said to have suggested the new version of the book be titled ‘I Told You So, You F***ing Fools.’
— — — — —
UP VOTE !
It surprises me a bit that Cardi B is that popular, presumably abroad as well as here. Well, the interview from which Neo quotes was on an Australian program, so that makes sense. (Speaking of which, is there a lot of ex-US readership for this blog?) But then, anything about hip-hop culture or anything like that is always going to be under my radar.
This is one more example of why I think the Amish have essentially the right idea – don’t just turn it off, smash it and throw it out, then keep it out. The existence of a recording like this is itself evidence of an anti-social mindset on the part of everyone involved in its production and distribution. Here’s why: We all exist in a social matrix around us. Some with more exposure, others with less, but it’s always there and we ‘swim’ in it. A thing like this is like pouring ink or sewage into that ‘pool’ of society. It diffuses – maybe there are corners of the ‘pool’ that the contamination never quite reaches at strength, but the effect does get almost everywhere in the end. Cardi herself would no doubt be one of those smarty-pants people who say “well, if you don’t like it, don’t listen” without realizing, or choosing to ignore, this aspect of her ‘work’. This is not news to most people here, of course; I’m just conceptualizing it to myself, which could come in handy if I ever have to argue the point with my younger relatives or similar.
But maybe she’s being honest when she says this kind of stuff is just normal to her. In her sphere, that may well be true. God help her if so. Dreher it was, I believe, who commented on this same example, “What a sick joke this culture has become.”
If I wanted to be mean, I might offer the hypothesis that if there were a way to encode some kind of neural trigger in this recording such that whoever listens to it all the way through more than, say, 15 times would have his or her brain spiked with code that would cause sudden and irreversible debility in four to five years after that, a variety of problems might be solved. But as I say, that would be mean.
However, if such a trigger could be devised, much better to have it be, say, a subliminal Psalm 50 that would suddenly spring to mind at that five-year mark, and be prayed fervently. “Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy…” That could also solve many problems, and in a more God-pleasing way than my first suggestion, which is reprehensible. If the one could be done, then the other should also be possible.
(edit: Neo, you caught my exact thought upon seeing Cap’n’s comment! The Prophets had a couple of things to say along those same lines.)
(edit 2: misspelled the rapper’s name at one point – whatever, these rappers are all the same to me.)
It does not have to be this way, at all, at all. (And even if it does, all is not lost).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkYFLYTLLtk
So if I flipped this song around and wrote a song called HAD, Hard Ass Dick, Fame and fortune would be mine? Asking for a friend.
Who is this Corgi-B chap? I would have simply said “Pembroke Welsh Corgi” instead of “Cardigan Welsh Corgi” Calling yourself Corgi-B seems so dehumanizing.
Ms B’s previous employment as stripper, prostitute and small time criminal is quite apparent.
The Restoration was followed by Methodism, the Regency by victorianist impulses.
What’s coming this time around?
Caedmon, that’s true. I was just a little disappointed that in that clip, she sang with her back to the altar. Okay, it’s a concert piece, fine (one of my issues with Western sacred music of the last few hundred years). Still… otherwise, quite nice.
Given your moniker, you know something about sacred music, I figure. 🙂
Well Cardi B. may be a little vulgar but the real problem is Trump’s tone.
/sarc
Neo:
Good point. But I figure when He does show up to “judge between the quick and the dead,” Cardi B has established such an appallingly low baseline for “the dead” that I now have a better chance of being among the “quick.” So, “Bring It.”
There’s nothing new about black women singing filthy lyrics. Look up Lucille Bogan
on YouTube sometime. She was singing just as dirty as anything CruddyB ever came up with back in the 1930s. “Shave “Em Dry” is about as dirty as you’d ever like a song to be.
Candace vs. Cardi is the perfect metaphor for the 2020 election, which in terms of cultural popularity is troubling.
NeoConScum on September 8, 2020 at 6:00 pm said:
This old school guy just read the lyrics.
I’m gasping. Simply GASPING.
But, hey, she’s not a Trump Fan.
Well, DDuuuuuuuhhhhh….!!!
You’ve led a sheltered life. This stuff is as old as time. See my post above^^.
the absolute degradation of western culture on display. so it is…for now.
As donfulano said, Candace Owens is or was running a Twitter war with CardiB.
It’s on Twitchy if you want to watch the fight.
Int.Bystander:
Yep, I’m appalled at my decades not slithering around looking for filth. Look at the “renaissance of wonder” this white boy has missed.
Thank God.
I haven’t listened to the song and won’t so I may be off base here. But, WAP (term maybe not song) is empowering and pro womxn, pro feminist? Females are powered by their ‘P’, ‘W’ or not? Sure, and Baby It’s Cold Outside is about rape and needs canceling. Cool.
Is CardIB destined to die destitute Without A Pimp?