Facts (Tom MacDonald song)
| "Facts" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Tom MacDonald and Ben Shapiro | ||||
| Released | January 26, 2024 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 3:20 | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Tom MacDonald | |||
| Tom MacDonald singles chronology | ||||
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| Music video | ||||
| "Facts" on YouTube | ||||
"Facts" is a song by Canadian rapper Tom MacDonald and American political commentator Ben Shapiro. It was released on January 26, 2024 and marked Shapiro's debut musical appearance. On the trap and "MAGA rap" song, MacDonald and Shapiro use several conservative talking points. Prior to the song's release, Shapiro frequently criticized rap music, describing it as "not music". "Facts" received largely negative critical reception.
Background
Ben Shapiro founded the conservative news website, The Daily Wire, in 2015. Prior to appearing on "Facts", Shapiro frequently publicly criticized rap music as not being art and once stated in an interview with rapper Zuby that it was "not music".[1][2] A video of him reading the lyrics to Cardi B's song "WAP" in a deadpan tone in 2020 on his Daily Wire podcast, The Ben Shapiro Show, went viral online soon after its release.[3] "Facts" was released on January 26, 2024. Following its release, it reached number one on the U.S. iTunes sales chart.[4]
Composition and lyrics
"Facts" is a trap[5] song, described by critics as "MAGA rap".[1][6][7] Its title is a reference to Shapiro's catchprase, "facts don't care about your feelings". On it, MacDonald makes a number of conservative, "anti-woke" talking points, criticizing gender pronouns, the LGBT community, gun control, abortion rights, gender, opponents of white pride, the slogan "defund the police", and the Black Lives Matter movement.[5] In his verse, Shapiro raps in an Auto-Tuned[8] "drumfire monotone" about "woke Karens" in his comment sections, his yarmulke, and his viral "WAP" video, and claims that rap listeners waste money on strippers and will end up in jail.[4] He ends his verse by telling fellow rapper Nicki Minaj to "take notes" and gives a call to action for listeners to download the song and get MacDonald and Shapiro a number one placement on a Billboard chart.[3] In the song's chorus, MacDonald raps, "I hope I offend you/I ask myself 'What would Ben do?'".[4] The song was described as having a "white supremacist rhetoric" by Candace McDuffie of The Root.[6]
Music video
In the song's music video, MacDonald wears grills, box braids, and a hoodie that reads "I Don't Care If I Offend You".[6][1] Shapiro also appears in a gray hoodie, which reads "facts don't care about your feelings" in red lettering, and on several TV screens, which P.J. Grisar of The Forward compared to a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix.[7][4] Within three days of the music video's release, it received over seven million views on YouTube.[6]
Reception
Nicki Minaj tweeted her congratulations to Shapiro upon the song reaching number one on the iTunes sales chart, calling it "not bad" and comparing it to her 2010 single "Roman's Revenge".[3] For The Daily Beast, Justin Baragona criticized the song as "merely another lazy exercise in titillating easily entertained conservatives while supposedly enraging 'snowflake' liberals" on which "Shapiro awkwardly rattles off a bunch of trolly lyrics with the sole purpose of creating a viral clip" and MacDonald makes "well-worn right-wing culture war talking points".[1] Alex Hudson of Exclaim! called it the "worst song ever" and "a three-minute self-parody that speed-runs through every talking point that anti-woke dogmatists are weirdly obsessed with", also calling it "dreadful", "terrible", and "depressingly predictable" and stating that Shapiro had "sunk to dismal new depths of nerdiness" by appearing on the song.[5] Boing Boing's Grant St. Clair opined that "Facts" being "a bad song ... goes without saying" and that it was "seemingly designed to cause outrage" due to "right-wing 'art'" having "nothing but outrage to rely on". St. Clair also wrote, "Shapiro has famously said that rap music isn't music, and I would have to agree with him where this song is concerned."[8] Candace McDuffie of The Root wrote that "Facts" was "way, way worse than you think it is", adding that MacDonald and Shapiro were "co-opting a Black art form to disparage Black folks" and that Shapiro was "beyond hypocritical" for "employ[ing] the same artistry [he] claim[ed] to hate for profit".[6]
P.J. Grisar of The Forward wrote, "The song doesn't register the irony that it is conveying what it believes is a subversive, devil may care attitude toward scandalizing leftist pieties via a medium — rap — that has historically offended almost everyone at some time or another."[4] Kelly McClure of Salon wrote that Shapiro rapped "in what he likely believes to be the best of his ability".[7]
References
- ^ a b c d Baragona, Justin (January 26, 2024). "Ben Shapiro Is a Rapper Now Because That's What 2024 Deserves". The Daily Beast. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
- ^ Timotija, Filip (January 28, 2024). "Nicki Minaj congratulates Ben Shapiro on '#1' track: 'not bad'". The Hill. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
- ^ a b c Crimmins, Tricia (January 29, 2024). "'Is this real life??!!' Ben Shapiro's new rap track earns a shoutout from Nicki Minaj". The Daily Dot. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
- ^ a b c d e Grisar, P. J. (January 29, 2024). "Ben Shapiro changes his tune on rap — by rapping". The Forward. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
- ^ a b c Hudson, Alex (January 26, 2024). "Ben Shapiro Makes Rap Debut on Worst Song Ever". Exclaim!. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
- ^ a b c d e McDuffie, Candace (January 29, 2024). "MAGA 'Rap' is the Worst Form of Cultural Appropriation". The Root. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
- ^ a b c McClure, Kelly (January 27, 2024). "Ben Shapiro's new anti-woke rap single tops Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears". Salon. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
- ^ a b St. Clair, Grant (January 27, 2024). "Ben Shapiro is a rapper now. Yes, really". Boing Boing. Retrieved January 30, 2024.