Some musicians, they said, object on principle to the censoring of their work. Record executives and artist managers offered various explanations for the inconsistency, although many were not willing to speak on the record.
Now business is the driving force, as labels chase down every click and playlist placement to maximize songs’ streaming income. Decades ago, that may have been done in part to avoid political controversy. Today, most major releases that have some naughty words - including the latest from Taylor Swift and even Stevie Wonder - also come out in censored versions. The success of “WAP” highlighted one of the music industry’s dirty little secrets: that even in an age of rampant vulgarity - and 35 long years since a crackdown on lyrics by the Washington elite - the bowdlerizing of pop songs remains deeply ingrained in the work of artists and their marketers. If fans listened only to that version, they wouldn’t have learned what its title acronym stood for - instead, just that something was “wet and gushy.” Wynter recalled that the ostensibly sanitized copy first offered by Cardi B’s label, Atlantic - the “clean” version of the song, in industry jargon - was still too racy for broadcast, leading Wynter to ask for nine additional, last-minute edits.Īnd the music video for “WAP” that caught fire on YouTube was elaborately censored. Before “WAP” could be played on the radio, its most explicit verbiage was pruned by Cardi B’s engineers. Yet despite the song’s uninhibited raunch, its popularity was partly earned from one of the music industry’s oldest bugaboos: self-censorship. An instant social media phenomenon, the song spawned remixes and memes galore, including a subgenre of outraged-slash-titillated parental reaction videos. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for four weeks and drew 1.1 billion clicks on streaming platforms.
One of the year’s most inescapable hits, it held No. Of course, “WAP” did hit the airwaves, and the streaming services, in a big way. “Thank God we have systems in place,” he recalled thinking, “that prevented that record from hitting the airwaves.” “It hits you at the very beginning - like, whoa! - and then it just keeps on going and going and going,” Wynter said, still marveling at the song’s barrage of suggestive imagery. But even Wynter, the head of hip-hop and R&B programming for the broadcasting giant iHeartMedia, was taken aback by “WAP,” Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s brazenly graphic anthem of lubrication, when he was given a preview before the song’s release in August. Doc Wynter still remembers the first time he heard “WAP.”Ī top radio programmer for decades, Wynter has come across countless explicit rap tracks and “blue” R&B songs that required nips and tucks before they could be played on-air.
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