Lil Yachty decided to put Concrete Boys signee Camo! to the test after the rapper claimed waterboarding wasn’t real torture.
“He said that he don’t believe that… He thinks he could take it,” Yachty said in the clip, which can be seen below.
Confident he’d handle it with ease, Camo agreed to the challenge for $500, laughing it off before things got serious. But once the waterboarding started, he only lasted a few seconds before giving up, leaving Yachty and streamer Raud in hysterics.
“So that shit real, huh?” someone behind the camera joked as Camo walked away, catching his breath. Raud also tried it next—and while he managed to hold out a little longer, he too tapped out after just a few seconds.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 2007, waterboarding is a violent and inhumane form of torture where a person is tied to a board, their face covered with a cloth, and water poured over it. “It is a paradigmatic torture technique that has long been considered a war crime; indeed, the United States has prosecuted enemy soldiers—and even U.S. troops—for engaging in the practice,” the ACLU stated.
Although waterboarding is widely recognized as a form of torture, the United States has often tried to minimize its brutality—most prominently during the Bush administration. According to NPR, the practice dates back to the 14th century but regained attention during the War on Terror, becoming one of several human rights abuses and war crimes carried out by U.S. troops against prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.
In 2018, journalist Christopher Hitchens voluntarily underwent waterboarding for Vanity Fair to experience the method firsthand.
“You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it ‘simulates’ the feeling of drowning,” Hitchens wrote at the time. “This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure.”
In 2013, according to The Guardian, Yassin Bey subjected himself to some of the harsh human rights violations that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay were subjected to, including force-feeding. The infamous detention camp, which opened amid the War on Terror, has had at least nine people die in custody.
