There are a lot of dubious aspects to the viral rumor that Drake allegedly put hot sauce into his used condom to kill his sperm. According to the story, which was initially shared on the Instagram gossip account @toomuchhottea, an unnamed model is reportedly ready to sue Drake after she went to retrieve his used condom from the trash and emptied its contents back inside of her. Upon doing so, she claims to have felt an intense burning sensation in her vagina, which caused her to scream. Drake then revealed that he poured hot sauce into the condom in order to thwart any furtive pregnancy plots.
Are we meant to believe that this woman didn’t notice any red liquid inside the condom? Even if Drake had some magical clear hot sauce or used an opaque condom, wouldn’t she smell the hot sauce wafting out?
The story is just a little too ridiculous, and is most likely fake. But regardless, it introduces a pressing question: Would using hot sauce as spermicide actually work?
The rumor doesn’t specify what kind of hot sauce Drake was using, so it’s hard to say for sure. However, almost all hot sauces are made with some combination of salt, peppers and vinegar (Sriracha, Cholulua and Crystal are prime examples). Tapatio is one of the few made from acetic acid instead of vinegar, but vinegar is technically a diluted form of acetic acid, anyway. So, odds are that any hot sauce Drake had on hand would have been pretty acidic in nature.
While there haven’t been any studies that measure the specific effects of vinegar on sperm, there has been research on how acidity impacts sperm motility and longevity. Normal sperm pH is between 7.2 and 8.0, which makes it alkaline. In a 2000 study from Johns Hopkins University, sperm samples were introduced to hydrochloric acid, which has a pH of 4.0. Within one minute, the sperm were immobilized, and within 10, the sperm were killed.
Meanwhile, acetic acid has a pH of 4.7, while vinegar has a pH 2.0 to 3.0. Hot sauce labels don’t tell you exactly how much vinegar or acetic acid is in the product, but per South Dakota State University’s site on food safety, hot sauce must have a pH of 4.6 or lower in order to ensure that bacteria can’t grow. So there’s some possibility that hot sauce would be capable of killing sperm, or at least immobilizing it, if it was exposed to the spicy stuff for at least a minute. Theoretically, this would render it incapable of causing pregnancy.
For very obvious reasons, hot sauce shouldn’t be used as a contraceptive — it might not be 100 percent foolproof, and you just absolutely do not want to put that inside of a vagina. But for lack of an alternative, the idea of Drake putting hot sauce in a condom to kill the sperm isn’t totally unrealistic. Flushing the sperm and rinsing the condom or dousing it in an actual spermicide seem like wiser choices, but that’s not quite scandalous enough for Gossip Instagram.
If the story is somehow true, I hope the woman’s vagina heals well and she looks deep within herself about the ethics of stealing someone’s sperm. And hopefully, Drake comes up with a better, less outrageous means of not knocking people up.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
