Americana star Margo Price turned Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s buzzed-about new collaboration “WAP” into a sultry slow jam for a recent The Daily Show segment. The singer-songwriter’s performance was part of an effort to break down the double standards women face in politics, music and elsewhere.
Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion have faced plenty of criticism since releasing “WAP” on Aug. 7, with detractors zeroing in on the song’s feminist, sex-positive (if raunchy) lyrics. It’s become an especially hot topic among conservative figureheads, both politicians and media members, with a Rolling Stone piece pointing out that the two artists are receiving some of the backlash because they are not only women, but women of color; after all, men have been singing about sex in similar ways for years.
“Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion have given us the sex-positive song of the summer, celebrating women owning their sexuality,” The Daily Show correspondent Dulcé Sloan explains. “The point is, male musicians talk about sex all the time … but when women do it, people are like, ‘This is vulgar …'”
When The Daily Show host Trevor Noah points out that rappers and hip-hop artists also have to break through people’s preconceived notions of their music, Dulce argues that a female artist from a different genre would still be getting the same criticisms for the lyrics. To help make her point, she enlisted Price, who turns “WAP” from a rap to an acoustic track that even sounds … kind of romantic?
Price recently released a new album, That’s How Rumours Get Started (which, sadly, doesn’t include her “WAP” cover). The artist has been a vocal advocate for equality in country music throughout her career; in fact, during a recent Grand Ole Opry appearance, she shared from stage, ”Country music owes such a great deal of what we have to Black artists and Black music, and there is no place for sexism, racism in this music.”
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