Reaction Shots: Why Ben Shapiro Dislikes Your Rap Song

Or when WAP is Crap

Dear reader,

In his book The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt outlines the Moral Foundation Theory, proposing that our intuitions form much of our ethics, ultimately developing the narratives and values we want to embed ourselves with. This theory comprises of five parts: care (the priority to protect one another), loyalty (the priority to commit themselves with another), fairness (to treat others equally), authority (set an order and obey), and sanctity (being sensitive to toxicity). What’s often understood about the concept is how much progressives and conservatives understand each other. Haidt, a liberal who leaned left, discovered that his team doesn’t understand their opponents. Progressives held intuitions like care and fairness, but conservatives embody all of the five foundations. 

The Moral Foundations Theory has been influential in understanding what drives political expression, yet sometimes I wonder if the notion and the findings has became outdated. The initial research was inspired by the culture wars driven in the 1990s and 2000s when avatars like the Tea Party Movement and Occupy Wall Street emerged as significant standpoints in American politics preceding 2016. But the battle of cultural supremacy becomes more intense when it now plays out on social media, with minimal restrictions and standards. Traits like authority and sanctity are now associated with verified Twitter careerists, rather than the religious right. If anything, irony and trolling play a big part in making the two sides more equivalent than they would think. Except one side has all the cultural riches, leaving the other to be an underdog.

That was what I was thinking when Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s WAP (which stands for Wet Ass Pussy), a well-charted song where the two women, in an elaborate series of rooms that reminds me of Jason Derulo's Talk Dirty. Predictably, it inspired disgust from conservatives, including one Ben Shapiro. A clip of Shapiro nasally reading the sexually explicit lyrics went viral, earned some hilarious remixes, which includes joking remarks about his wife - a doctor - being able to medically diagnose someone’s vagina for being wet. 

The level of criticism has been fair for Shapiro, but people should not be surprised that people of his ilk would be averse to music that doesn’t match their conception of modernity. At its core, hip hop can be hedonistic, wear excesses upon its sleeves, and glorify a criminal culture and bad boy conquests, like having multiple women lust over you through one video. One thing that has been interesting is how the right-wing response has shifted, to the point that some conservatives (nee Shapiro) have come to accept it.

There was a time when conservatives voraciously opposed to hip hop and held Kumbaya with the PMRC over filthy 2 Live Crew lyrics. Since then conservatives have a variety of opinions of the genre, as it becomes the most predominant in popular music. You can find articles in National Review and The Federalist about why one can embrace hip-hop without sacrificing much of their principles. Think tank scholars, like in AEI have written about the songs conservatives should embrace when it’s in line with their principles. There’s also a great video essay combining both arguments in response to Shapiro’s position about rap. 

The most particular example of conservatism and rap intersecting positively was Kanye West being briefly on board with Donald Trump, subsequently released an album that’s a celebration of Christianity. Throughout his promotion of Jesus is King, he went against abortion and spoke of his addiction to pornography. Commentators from David French to Sohrab Ahmari were unreserved in their praise for Jesus Is King, even as it’s touted by music critics as his most mediocre effort yet.

For many of WAP’s fans, particularly those writing in larger publications, the song is an industrious call for female emancipation, a reclamation of sex by black women. Vox’s Alex Abad-Santos goes so far to call the song is “a public health triumph.” (Interestingly enough, the same author’s previous article is an attempt to tie performative masculinity with the pandemic). In Complex, Brianna Holt says “It’s common for women in music to fall victim to criticism when they create anything that is tied to their womanhood, and Black female artists in hip-hop are often degraded and hypersexualized for their freedom of expression.” This presumes that those who criticize the song are taking away the free speech of Megan Jovon Ruth Pete and Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar. And it’s quite silly.

The refrain of pop culture being a blank slate for the writer’s grievances have been quite common in criticism. In the same essay, Holt says ‘“WAP” could not be more valuable and necessary during a time when people are actively trying to unlearn their own biases and recognizing ways that they contribute to the neglect of Black women.’ So female rappers like Nicki Minaj, Noname and Salt and Peppa cannot ever be criticized, otherwise, said detractors are upholding some stringent form of patriarchy? 

There’s no curiosity in this kind of critique, and to borrow from film theorist David Bordwell, the musical equivalent of ‘blunt force cinephilia’. The WAP discourse accommodates sweeping claims and the sense that anyone who disagrees is a fist-clenching puritan. What probably makes it more powerful than Shapiro’s is that they occupy much of the conversation, while conservatives hold a tiny space. They can dismiss the song whenever they want but are aware of the playing field that’s set up against them.

As for the song itself, WAP is incredibly mediocre. That it’s derived from a hyper-sexualized world that’s common in and outside of hip-hop shows they have not triumphed anything. Certainly, no matter how many women in their music video they dress up in latex, maximal objectification isn’t a substitute for sexual autonomy and it hollows out the prowesses of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. Sex is perhaps a complicated subject and shamelessly, WAP doesn’t capture those stakes.  And as the genders swap, with other songs in mind like Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda, it comes off as empty provocation when the sexual act isn’t itself modified, while all standards of taste are thrown out.

Shapiro is a heavyweight in the conservative media complex and Cardi B is one of the biggest rappers out there; an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. The song is still successful and if commentators like Shapiro look as if they were trying to cancel it out of existence, then they’d fail. But he has benefitted in this controversy with some awareness that, at the end of the day, this is poking fun of his stodgy rigid self. Do we need more conservatives commenting on popular culture? Certainly. Just don’t expect them to think whatever is vulgar is meant to be empowering. But don’t expect that whatever is vulgar will go away. 

Thanks for reading.