Earlier this Autumn, social media users were delighted to find out that former First Daughter Sasha Obama had joined the TikTok trend — and that she’s apparently a pretty big fan of City Girls‘ remix of Moneybagg Yo’s “Said Sum,” rapping along word-for-word. However, some more conservative observers were disgusted to see the young Obama lip-syncing the raunchy raps — or at least, they pretended to be for the sake of team solidarity and optics. While the video was deleted shortly after it found its way onto Twitter via screengrabs, City Girls instead took aim at her critics in a new profile for the Los Angeles Times.
Group member JT felt that what the elder Obama sister did wasn’t any of those critics’ business. “I didn’t [like] her privacy being invaded,” she says. “A lot of people [were] reposting it like, ‘Look at Obama daughter! This, that, and the third,’ they made it a big deal.”
Obama wasn’t the only one to face conservative criticism over the content of a viral video this year. In September, pundits went nuts over Cardi B’s racy video for the salacious single “WAP” with Megan Thee Stallion, prompting Cardi to brag recently about making “Republicans on Fox News” cry about it. Meanwhile, her collaborator Megan also came under fire despite toning the sexuality of her Saturday Night Live performance of “Don’t Stop” way down. Instead, Kentuck Attorney General Daniel Cameron decried the performance for its admonishment to “protect Black women” after he failed to indict the officers who killed Breonna Taylor during a botched raid on her apartment.
City Girls were among the many female rap acts to point out sexist double standards in how women in hip-hop are criticized, putting it down to men feeling threatened by their success. That hasn’t stopped them from continuing to put out immodest anthems praising their power. Check out Uproxx’s review of their latest album, City On Lock, here.
