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Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, the proven duo behind the politician-provoking 2020 megahit “WAP,” aim to build on that success with their new single and video “Bongos.”
Watch “Bongos” above, and stream it on Apple Music and Spotify here and here, respectively.
In a YouTube livestream conversation with Megan before the video's premiere, Cardi told viewers, “['Bongos' is] not really like 'WAP,' and the theme…of the photo shoot, we wanted to trick y’all. Because we actually wanted y’all to think it got like, ‘WAP’ element, but it don’t.”
Megan recalled, “I was so happy when I got the song because it doesn’t sound like anything that’s out right now, and I feel like it definitely challenged me to rap in a different way. 'Cause I never rapped over a beat like this before, and I was like, ‘Oh, OK, she want me to go put my foot in this bitch. OK, I can do that for her. She want me to work for it, OK, here we go.’”
Meg also made sure to point out a "side note, outside of music."
“For me as a person, I don’t really—this space that I’m in mentally, I’m not like fooling with too many people that don’t give me good vibes, good energy," she told Cardi at the 17-minute mark below. "I have literally created boundaries. And Cardi is somebody that I want in my space, in my energy. … She been nothing but real to me. Like, the industry is so fucked up, but this girl is probably the only girl who have been this consistent and this real, and this—this just great of a person to me.”
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While it's not clear whether "Bongos" will ultimately end up on her new album, Cardi recently provided fans with an update on the long-awaited release in an interview with Vogue México y Latinoamérica.
“I’m not going to release any more collaborations, I’m going to put out my next solo single," she told the publication in August, adding that she was "working on the cover art and ideas for the next record" at the time.
The album does not yet have an official release date. It'll mark the first solo full-length from Cardi since her breakout debut Invasion of Privacy, released in 2018 off the strength of "Bodak Yellow."
Meanwhile, Megan Thee Stallion’s most recent album, Traumazine, marked its one-year anniversary in August. Earlier this year, she tempered expectations when it comes to new music, telling InStyle that she was currently "focused on healing."
As for "WAP," its cultural omnipresence was still evident as recently as this week, with oft-cited legal affairs journalist Meghann Cuniff reporting on a copyright lawsuit dismissal invoking the track's lyrics and subject matter.
