Rachel Wagner - Bad B*tch Syntax
Rachel Wagner is completing a Bachelor’s-Accelerate Master’s degree in Linguistics, with minors in Spanish and Ethnic Studies. She is interested in how language shapes identity, culture, and power. Outside of academics, she enjoys singing, cooking, and spending time with her dog.
Cardi B. "WAP feat. Megan Thee Stallion." YouTube, uploaded by Cardi B, 7 Aug. 2020, youtube.com.
Rachel Wagner
LING 4830 Honors Thesis
Dr. J Calder
Bad B*tch Morphosyntax
If you watch the music video for Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B’s WAP, grammar might be the last thing you think about. In fact, most people don’t think about grammar when they listen to hip hop. Part of the beauty and innovation of hip hop is that it plays with grammar and uses “incorrect grammar” poetically. My thesis is about how grammar itself can tell us about power, specifically when it comes to how female rappers talk about sex.
I zoom into the fine-grained aspects of grammar, like who is the subject of a sentence, who is the object, whether something is said directly or hinted at. These are the kinds of details hip hop does not traditionally focus on, but they directly shape how power relations are constructed. The difference between “I ate it” and “it was eaten by me” is not just stylistic. It carries real weight in how we interpret power, intention, and responsibility. Both sentences describe the same event, but they are different in one crucial way. In the first, the speaker sounds more in control. In the second, the speaker sounds more passive, because “me” is the object of the sentence. That shift is agency: who is doing the action versus who is being acted upon.
My thesis tracks sexual agency across a decade (2014-2024) of charting songs by female rappers, looking at how often women position themselves as the ones in control. Across the data, female rappers consistently and increasingly frame themselves as active participants rather than passive ones. For example, Saweetie says “You can look, don’t touch”, actively setting the parameters of engagement between her and the listener (Saweetie and Doja Cat, 2021). Megan Thee Stallion powerfully asserts “walk in the room and I’m giving commands, I am the captain he the lieutenant” (Megan Thee Stallion, 2020). Even in cases where they are talking about letting someone else do something, the structure still keeps them in control. Permissive phrases like “let him” still position the speaker as the one with the power to make the decision.
There is also a shift over time in how directly agency is expressed. Earlier artists often relied more on metaphor and layered innuendo. And by 2020, the language becomes more directly explicit. For example, in 2014 Nicki Minaj released the thinly veiled euphemism-heavy track “Anaconda” (Nicki Minaj, 2014) compared to later tracks like the acronymic “WAP” (Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, 2020) and “Twerk” by City Girls (2018). There’s very little left to interpretation, including the grammatical structure. Even looking at the titles, “Anaconda” is a euphemism for male genitalia and “WAP” is an explicit acronym for female genitalia. The difference in these song titles illustrates to move away from euphemism and also a less phyllo-centric perspective. After 2020, female rap songs again became less explicitly sexual but still agentive and more focused on the female body and pleasure.
However, female rappers are not being explicitly sexual for pure shock value. These artists are structuring their increasingly explicit language in a way that consistently centers themselves as agents. That consistency matters, especially in a genre and a broader culture where women’s sexuality is often policed, criticized, or framed through someone else’s perspective. This is where my work connects to ideas from hip hop feminism, especially the “politics of pleasure”, the idea that women openly claiming desire and enjoyment can be a form of resistance against White patriarchal standards. The Politics of Pleasure, as theorized by Joan Morgan (2020) is deeply rooted in Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic” (1984). She says, “In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self denial” (Lorde, p. 59).What I am showing is that this empowered eroticism isn’t just happening at the level of content, but at the level of grammar. The way these sentences are constructed reinforces the same message: I am the one in control.
Female rappers aren’t just changing what gets said about sex, they’re changing how it gets said and who gets to say it.
Works Cited
- Saweetie, & Doja Cat. (2021). Best friend [Song]. Icy; Warner Records. Genius.
- Megan Thee Stallion. (2020). Captain Hook. On Suga [Album]. 300 Entertainment.
- Cardi B, & Megan Thee Stallion. (2020). WAP [Song]. Atlantic Records. Genius.
- Minaj, N. (2014). Anaconda [Song]. Young Money Entertainment. Genius.
- City Girls. (2018). Twerk [Song]. Quality Control Music; Motown Records. Genius.
- Morgan, Joan (2020). It's About Time We Got Off: Claiming a Pleasure Politic in Black Feminist Thought (PhD). New York University.
- Lorde, Audre. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power.” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Crossing Press, 1984, pp. 53-59