Tiger King’s Carole Baskin slammed Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s ‘WAP’ music video, and the reason why has less to do with Kylie Jenner and everything to do with wild cats. The 59-year-old Big Cat Rescue owner is reportedly disappointed that the video features these exotic creatures. She told Entertainment Weekly that videos like “WAP” are enough to make “every ignorant follower want to imitate by doing the same.”
Unlike Baskin, most fans were more interested in calling for the removal of Kylie Jenner from the music video than its big cats. The 23-year-old Keeping Up With the Kardashians star had an underwhelming cameo compared to appearances by Normani, Atlanta-based rapper Rubi Rose, and more. The Kylie Skin mogul inspired responses ranging from memes to a literal petition to have her scene edited out. Ironically, some fans on Twitter even called for Baskin to “replace” Kylie Jenner’s appearance. But clearly, the Tiger King star isn’t here for the jokes.
On Saturday, August 8, Baskin issued a statement to EW and TMZ condemning the use of wild cats in the “WAP” music video. While she acknowledged that the big cats were probably “photoshopped,” she didn’t let rappers Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion off the hook completely—and she lowkey shaded their “explicit” song in the process.
“My guess is that most people won’t even see the photoshopped cats in the scenes because the rest of it is so sexually explicit,” Baskin told the outlet. “I was happy to see that it does appear to all be photoshopped. It didn’t look like the cats were really in the rooms with the singers.”
But according to Baskin, that doesn’t necessarily mean that no big cats were ever used in the making of this video. “That being said, you have to pose a wildcat in front of a green screen to get that image and that doesn’t happen in the wild,” she explained. “It can happen in sanctuaries like ours where cats have plenty of room to avoid a green screen (or would shred it if offered access and could die from ingesting it).”
The rescue CEO adds, “That tells me they probably dealt with one of the big cat pimps, probably even one of the ones shown in Tiger King, Murder, Mayhem and Madness, who make a living from beating, shocking and starving cats to make them stand on cue in front of a green screen in a studio. That’s never good for the cat.”
Baskin believes that this could lead fans of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion to want to do the “same” thing. “That makes every follower of these artists, who doesn’t know better, want to imitate by doing the same,” she told EW. “After tigers are too old for pay to play sessions by people like Joe Exotic, Bhagavan ‘Doc’ Antle, Marc McCarthy, Mario Tabraue and others, they become a liability instead of an asset,” she added, referring to her fellow Tiger King subjects.
“No matter how you cut it, it’s always abusive to the cat and dangerous to the public,” Baskin stressed to the outlet.