Tom MacDonald/Youtube DFree/ShutterStock (Licensed)
Tricia Crimmins
Tech
Posted on Jan 29, 2024
Three years after conservative influencer Ben Shapiro went viral for stiltedly reading the lyrics of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” on a 2020 episode of The Ben Shapiro Show, he was actually featured on a real rap song. “Facts,” a track from Canadian political rapper Tom MacDonald, dropped on Friday and contains a verse from Shapiro.
The song found an unlikely ally in Nicki Minaj, who praised Shapiro for his bars while in the midst in a feud with Megan Thee Stallion.
Minaj even congratulated Shapiro for topping the iTunes chart on Saturday.
In the track, MacDonald decries gender, wokeness, pronouns, abortion, the Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police movements, and the LGBTQ+ community and declares that he’s “not ashamed that he’s white.” All the aforementioned topics are popular conservative and right-wing talking points.
“Claim that I’m racist, yeah, alright, I’m not ashamed because I’m white,” Macdonald raps. “If every Caucasian’s a bigot, I guess every Muslim’s a terrorist, every liberal is right.”
MacDonald’s chorus shouts out Shapiro, saying “I hope I offend you, I ask myself, ‘What would Ben do?’”
“Facts” is a reference to one of Shapiro’s favorite catchphrases, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”
In his verse, Shapiro claims that he’s “got the facts,” references his Judaism, says that his comments section is full of “woke Karens,” and even references the “WAP” debacle: “Homie, I’m epic, don’t be a WAP,” he says.
At its close, Shapiro’s verse also sends a message to Minaj.
“Nicki, take some notes, I just did this for fun,” Shapiro says. “All my people download this, let’s get a Billboard number one.”
And Shapiro’s fans did get the song to be number one on iTunes.
“We’re now #1 overall on iTunes, too. On the way, we knocked off, among others, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki Minaj, Eminem, and Taylor Swift,” Shapiro tweeted on Friday. “@IAMTOMMACDONALD and I have officially made hip-hop great again, as was always my lifelong dream.”
In response to Shapiro’s rap and tweet about her, Minaj tweeted about “Facts.”
“Ben Shapiro put out a diss record,” Minaj tweeted on Saturday. “Is this real life??!! He said ‘Nicki take some notes’ nah.”
She also congratulated him for his ascendance on the iTunes chart—but not without claiming that “Facts” seems inspired by her 2023 song, “Roman’s Revenge.”
“I just listened to it @benshapiro not bad,” Minaj wrote. “Congrats on #1. But it def sounds like Roman’s Revenge when the beat first came in…idk.”
The rapper’s positive reaction to Shapiro is a change in tune: In June, Minaj ridiculed Shapiro for reading the lyrics to her song “Pound Town 2″ on his show, and the two went back and forth on X.
But Minaj’s praise for Shapiro has been overshadowed by her recent feud with Megan Thee Stallion, who put out a diss track (“Hiss”) that seems to reference Minaj, among other rappers. Minaj’s husband, Kenneth Petty, is a convicted sex offender, and Megan Thee Stallion raps about Megan’s Law, New York State’s sex offender registration law.
In turn, Minaj put out a track in response called “Big Foot,” ridiculing Megan Thee Stallion for being shot in the foot in 2020. “Big Foot” and “Hiss” follow “Facts” on the iTunes chat, which Shapiro tweeted about this morning.
“Happy Monday, fellow hip-hop legends!” Shapiro wrote. “You girls play nice, now.”
Tricia Crimmins is the IRL staff writer at the Daily Dot. She is also a New York-based comedian and an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Previously, she has written for Mashable, Complex Networks, and Moment magazine. She can be found on Twitter at @TriciaCrimmins.
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