Cardi B reveals she spent $100,000 on COVID-19 testing to make ‘WAP’ music video

Tiger King’s Carole Baskin may have voiced concern over the safety of the tigers and cheetahs featured in Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s ‘WAP’ music video. But when it came to the people on set, Cardi B wants everyone to know she spared no expense.

“It was kind of weird shooting the video in the age of corona,” Cardi said in an interview with i-D.

“Like, we had to spend $100,000 dollars just on testing,” she revealed of the safety precautions that were taken on set. “Everybody on the shoot had to get tested for coronavirus.”

The pandemic also resulted in other changes while filming the video, which broke the YouTube record for most views in 24-hours by an all-women collaboration when it dropped on August 7.

“We had a tiger and a leopard there, but we didn’t film with them in there because of safety and because of the pandemic. We spliced those scenes together,” Cardi explained.

But criticism around the ‘WAP’ video (and song) seemed mainly focused on its content, not COVID, as evidenced by the backlash (mainly from conservative men) about the explicitly sexual lyrics.

“I always encourage people to be confident, especially when it comes to your sexuality,” Cardi said in response.

“It doesn’t make me angry,” she said of the criticism. “It makes me happy. They keep talking and the numbers keep going up. At the end of the day, whatever they’re saying, the numbers speak for themselves.”

And as for Carole, who owns an animal sanctuary for wildcats, Cardi isn’t bothered. “I’m not gonna engage with Carole Baskin on that,” Cardi said in response to Carole’s criticism over the video’s use of wildcats. “Like, that’s just ridiculous you know? Oh, Lord. Like, girl you killed your goddamn husband.”