Cardi B just dropped her first new single of the year, “Up.” In the midst of that, she sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to chat about the song and more. At one point, the conversation turned to “WAP,” and Cardi expressed how shocked she was by the overall reaction to the song, especially since she thinks it’s “really mild.”
Cardi said:
“I was just really surprised. I was just so surprised, because everybody was raging. Like, ‘Oh my god, this song is so freaky and nasty.’ Even when I hear it, I’d be like, ‘This song, to me, is not as nasty and freaky,’ because I grew up listening to freaky-ass rappers. I grew up with Lil Kim, Trina, Khia, Foxy, everybody. I feel like this is really mild, but I don’t know. Nowadays, people just want to rave about everything. I feel because people have been wanting me and [Megan Thee Stallion] to collab, so when a record like that was too freaky… I guess they wasn’t really expecting that or something.”
She then got more specific about the outrage over the song expressed by conservatives, saying:
“I mean, because nowadays, people are just more open about their sexuality and everything. When ‘WAP’ came out, the people that was criticizing it the most, they were like, ‘This is so nasty. This is so freaky.’ I don’t even think it was like, I don’t know, religious people. It was really a lot of Republicans. Like, big Republicans. Not like senators… Like that. It was literally like those motherf*ckers that got blue checks on Twitter. They are big influencers. It’s just like, out of anything that y’all could have talked about… Since, like I said, I was endorsing. I used to endorse Bernie [Sanders], and then Joe Biden. They was just trying to figure a way out to pick on me. Like, ‘Oh, Joe Biden, is this the girl you were doing an interview with? The girl that’s talking about ‘WAP?’ That’s what you want America to be influenced by?’ It’s like, ‘Bro, come on, now.’ It was just a lot. I couldn’t believe it. When I saw that, when I saw Fox News talking so bad about ‘WAP,’ I was like, ‘Are you serious? Really?’
Watch a snippet from the interview below.
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