On March 7, journalist David Dennis Jr. created a petition on Change.org to have genre-bending rapper Fetty Wap perform “Trap Queen” at Nancy Reagan’s funeral.
Many in the social mediasphere chuckled at the visual of Wap rapping in front of old white conservatives then went about their day, but Dennis contends that the petition wasn’t meant merely as a joke.
Dennis noted via e-mail that the petition was devised to be “something different from the editorials and regular write-ups” he usually does. He created the petition after seeing people make the “same connection” between the former first lady and the mythical queen that Wap sings about taking over the drug game with.
Reagan is well-known for her “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign, but if her husband Ronald’s administration wasn’t looking the other way while the CIA let Nicaraguan Contras and Colombian Cartels flood the U.S. with cocaine, there would have been considerably less drugs to say no to. Additionally troubling is the resulting “War on Drugs,” which laid the foundation for the horror that is today’s mass incarceration epidemic.
The petition has surpassed its initial goal of 5,000 signatures (with 6,435 as of press time), but Dennis doesn’t “have any expectation of Fetty Wap to be at [Reagan’s] Funeral.”
“My expectations have been met: to have people talk about the real legacy of Ronald and Nancy Reagan,” he says. “Since she died, she’ll be getting eulogized a ton, but F that. I think we should talk about people’s legacies whether they’re alive or they died five minutes ago.”
