system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's summer hit "WAP" didn't break all the ground attributed to it.

I'm sure most people have either heard WAP, or heard of WAP. To some it is considered an exercise in vulgarity and excess detail. To others it is seen as a ground-breaking smash hit that opened up a lot of new opportunities to female rappers, and women in the music scene in general. I'm here to challenge the latter.

WAP is indeed a runaway success, topping charts and bringing with that success a flurry of innuendo and overt references to sex and genitals. I can see how this is seen as ground breaking in light of how often male rappers talk about their sex lives (real or alleged for the sake of writing a song) and the persistent double standards between men and women regarding sexuality, and I'll concede that Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion pushed the bar even higher, but they didn't open new ground. The song did not open doors previously shut, it is not something entirely new in its topic. As I understand, the general heralding of the song lyrically is about two women being unashamedly and openly sexual, something that society usually tells women they're not allowed to do while just giving men the "boys will be boys" treatment. It is upheld as a feminist masterpiece in how openly and overtly it talks about sex.

But this is nothing new, whether talking about genitals or sex, from female singers. We can look back just 2 years to the release of Act Up by City Girls. In it, one of the singers introduces themself as being on the mic with a "pussy sweet, pussy tight." A conservative mind would likely find this a completely unnecessary reference to her genitals, let alone how good her genitals are. But here it is, 2 years before the release of WAP, a female counterpart to male rappers discussing how big or hard their genitals are.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Lil Kim and Missy Elliott, 2 well-known multi-platinum artists with wide reach, have already been being overtly sexual and referencing sex and their own genitals for decades.

Lil Kim's 2011 release Black Friday includes the song "Gimme Brain," a whole song about cunnilingus and sex in general, including descriptions of how wet her genitals are with the lyrics "Even titanics get washed away" and "come and scuba dive" among others. We could go back further in Lil Kim's discography to the widely popular song "Magic Stick" in 2003, where she talks about having "the magic clit" and referencing sex acts overtly such as being "in the crib giving (men) deep throat."

As for Missy Elliott, we have "Work It" from 2002 making references to sex on the couch (and even pushing into being a side woman) and going "downtown and eat it like a vulture." We could explore back further to 2001 with "One Minute Man" talking about how she doesn't want a man who ejaculates prematurely, or even 1997 with "Sock it 2 Me" which should be self explanatory, going into some detail about her sexual prowess in the song, or fast forward to 2019 with "DripDemeanor," where she talks about how good her various bits are but that she's holding herself to a standard and refuses to have sex unless she gets a ring on her finger (a full year before Cardi B told us how she "got this ring").

And this is before I break out into other genres. We could take a look at Halestorm in 2018 with Do Not Disturb, a song based on a true story by singer Lzzy Hale regarding a threesome she had in a Dutch hotel.

So in essence, while WAP is a massively popular song, and while it provided yet another entry in the rise of female-led overt sexuality in rap, my view is that the song does not deserve the credit that people and critics keep throwing at it that they had gone where no ladies had gone before on a track. What I will accept as something that may change my view is how WAP somehow surpasses all the other examples I've given in bringing parity between men and women in regards to sexuality in music.
gpt
WAP doesn't just talk about sex. It talks about how they want kinky aggressive fetish sex. They want to be spat on, choked, put on display in public, degraded, tied up, beaten, and forced to experience pain. For a long time this was considered completely unacceptable for women to say. Women could like sex, but it had to be plain boring sex in pursuit of love. Even in 50 Shades of Grey, the man introduced the woman to kinky sex. She liked it, but it was still the man's initial choice. And of course, she found love.

Meanwhile, men could like hardcore porn, but the feminist position was that it was degrading to women and wrong. In a weird twist, they made an alliance with conservatives to label porn as evil exploitation despite fighting on nearly every other issue (e.g., abortion). The problem was that some women enjoyed being degraded. This political position put them in a weird bind. "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" doesn't exactly match a view where you desperately want a man to spit in your eyes. This song made it ok for feminist women to say they enjoy sex in which they are degraded by men. 

Even beyond that, it made it ok (or at least more ok) to want to be a literal prostitute. This is another place where the previous generation of feminists and conservatives agree (the last one is that trans women aren't real women). Prostitution is wrong and evil. It always represents evil men exploiting poor, defenseless female victims. Calling someone a gold digger is misogyny. But this song is about how the artists literally want to trade sex for money. They are just as proud of being gold diggers where they get married at the end as they are having short term sex for cash. The real world outcome of this type of song is that Only Fans or Seeking Arrangement are now considered real jobs, and regular women, celebrities, podcasters, etc. encourage each other to do it. It's not just this song, but the song is an anthem in the broader movement.

Ultimately, all the other songs you talk about are how the artists enjoy sex. This one is about how the artists enjoy degrading sex and are proud to be literal prostitutes. It directly flies in the face of conservatives and an older generation of feminists.

Since Monday was MLK day, I'll use him as an example. He lived in a world where black people were considered by many Americans to be inferior to white people. So he encouraged large scale protests. But he specifically asked everyone to dress not in their normal clothing, but in their formal Sunday best. They had to speak using "proper" white person grammar, and always act peacefully even while being physically beaten. It was always on black people to change their speaking manner, clothing, behavior, etc. Then eventually black people said screw it, we don't want to have to constantly be on guard and trying to impress white people anymore. Hip-hop culture rejected the idea of mainstream politically correct "one of the good ones" culture. Swearing, slang, baggy clothes, and raps about violence and drugs became common. The idea was that we don't have to be defined in relation to you and we can just do whatever we want, even if it makes us look bad according to your worldview. That's what WAP does for feminism.