Either Megan Thee Stallion is in bed with the U.S. government, or she’s genuinely sick of TikTok and the low-grade “talent” it furnishes. Whatever the case, a noticeable portion of her latest snake-themed single (following “Cobra” and “Hiss”), “BOA,” takes aim at the app with lines like, “Bitch, your time up, why is you not clockin’ out?/Doin’ shit for TikTok (yeah), bitch, I’m really hip hop” and “I ain’t need to make no TikTok/Bitch, your time up.” Alas, those quick to write people (or things) off as being practically “over” expose themselves to what Megan’s frequent cohort, Cardi B, once said on “Champagne Rosé”: “They say my time is tickin’/These hoes is optimistic.”
What’s more, considering that Megan recently trolled the likes of Nicki Minaj on “Hiss” for, among other things (like having a sex offender husband), being the sort of territorial rapper who insists there’s no space for other women in the rap game, these lyrics feel a bit hypocritical. But who can blame Megan, really, for attacking the upstarts on TikTok who have no polish whatsoever, let alone anything resembling freestyle prowess? Thus, as though to remind “TikTokers” what the real meaning of “tick tock” is, Thee Stallion samples from Gwen Stefani’s lead single (and her first as a solo artist) from 2004’s Love. Angel. Music. Baby., “What You Waiting For?”
Throughout the original version of this signature song, Stefani famously chants, “Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock” in between saying such self-deprecating things as, “Take a chance you stupid ho” (a pretty standard part of any woman’s internal dialogue in a society that places all emphasis on looks and money). That’s essentially what Megan, as a devious video game character in The Curse of the Serpent Woman, is daring three teenage friends to do as they embark upon the task of (as Lana commands) playing a video game. And take a chance they do—on ignoring the very clear disclaimer at the beginning of the game that reads: “The way you die in the game is how you die in real life.”
Unfazed by the warning, Jayden (the player who got the game from the “dark web” in the first place) carries on, his two other friends joining him with mostly blasé interest…until the game actually gets started and the stakes are suddenly very high. Various intercut scenes of Megan in “alternate dimension”-style (a.k.a. video game-y) settings then ensue—you know, so as to be able to showcase her body-ody-ody in varying scantily-clad degrees. The most scantily-clad being perhaps when she’s wearing next to nothing…apart from a plug-looking hookup in her back while she’s set against, appropriately, a The Matrix-inspired backdrop.
When she’s not doing that, she’s playing the “Serpent Woman” in question, killing these teenagers willy-nilly ‘cause, like Taylor said, “Don’t say I didn’t, say I didn’t warn ya.” Within the video game universe, Megan’s alter ego rides around on a giant boa constrictor, and also uses a Jafar-esque snake staff to vaporize one of the teens, searing a hole right into his stomach that almost compares to the one Helen Sharp (Godie Hawn) gets in Death Becomes Her.
As established at the beginning of the video, the narrative takes place in a late 90s/early 00s era (ergo, The Matrix-alluding visual), not just evidenced by the gaming equipment, but the set design of each teen’s room. The only thing missing from the girl’s room, perhaps, is a poster of someone like Enrique Iglesias. And, speaking of that last name, director Daniel Iglesias Jr. is sure to imbue the “BOA” video with plenty of slick POV shots to make the viewer occasionally feel like they’re playing the game too. Except with the benefit of not having to die the same way that these unfortunate teenage souls do. Though Jayden could have been finished off in a worse way than getting his face sat on by Megan.
As for the only female player/last woman standing of the trio, she’s already stopped playing the game, having grown bored enough to move on to tinkering with Snake (which was first released in 1997) on her Nokia. That doesn’t stop “Serpent Woman” from once again leaving her 0s and 1s realm long enough to approach the girl in her room and wield her boa to do what it does best: constrict. Coiling all the way around the girl’s torso and squeezing her until she explodes into bloody oblivion.
In short, Megan clearly isn’t hiding how much contempt she has for youths right now—particularly “TikTok teens.” But then, perhaps the underlying message is that some form of brain-draining, time-sucking apparatus—whether smartphones or video games—has existed in every era since the invention of the screen came to roost. Even so, Megan makes it apparent that TikTok appears to be the most nefarious and eye-rolling iteration to date. So it is that she directs her comment, “Bitch, your time up” not just, presumably, at Minaj (along with the lyric, “Post a picture, bitches call me mother/Now who’s sonnin’ who?,” which could be a reference to Minaj announcing, “All these bitches is my sons”), but at the app that has captured so many American hearts of a certain generation. Until now, as it faces an imminent ban.
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