Following a report by Billboard highlighting the massive success of the independent artist Tom MacDonald’s hit rap song “Facts,” featuring Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro, MacDonald posted a video to his Instagram stories on Thursday, suggesting foul play from major players in the music industry.
Days ago, MacDonald said distribution company TuneCore and YouTube were suppressing “Facts,” which he described as a takedown of establishment and mainstream media “sacred cows.”
“Well, unfortunately, I spoke with Billboard yesterday and there is a lot more f***ery going on than I’ve even been able to speak about publicly,” the rapper says in the video, adding that he hopes to tell his fans about that meeting sometime next week.
“The good news is, I was informed that Billboard is in fact counting our downloads until midnight, tonight,” MacDonald said. “All I’m gonna say is, download the song on iTunes, not on Amazon. That’s all I can say right now. Read into that however you want.”
MacDonald noted that Billboard published an article on Wednesday about “Facts” competing with mainstream rappers Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion on Billboard’s Hot 100.
The article is headlined, “Next Week’s Hot 100: Megan Thee Stallion vs. Nicki Minaj vs… Ben Shapiro?”
“[Shapiro’s] likely to get a No. 1 on Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart, anyway, as ‘Facts’ has held the lead on iTunes essentially since its Jan. 26 release date, even amidst the Nicki/Megan beefing,” Billboard said.
MacDonald said in his Instagram video, “Billboard actually released an article yesterday that said Ben and I are competing with Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion on the Hot 100 — which is the ‘big boy Billboard chart.’ Download ‘Facts’ on iTunes today, before midnight!”
He ended the video by joking that he knows he’s “annoying the hell out of you guys at this point. But, hey man, I’m an independent artist, I’m just doing what I can do to get the word out there.”
Shapiro has repeatedly brought humor to his rap debut, even referring to it as a “prank” and dressing up as the famous Ben Shapiro “Thug Life” meme to “celebrate” his rapping success. However, both Shapiro and MacDonald have discussed how the song challenges the destructive themes typically promoted in the rap genre.
“In our song, in the pre-chorus, we talked about not promoting guns, not promoting drugs, we talked about not turning people’s sons into thugs and their daughters into h**s,” MacDonald told Shapiro, during an appearance on “The Ben Shapiro Show.” “We sort of spoke out against what the status quo in hip-hop is, and for some reason we’re treated — we’re living in some sort of upside-down, backwards freak show — and it just seems like the most destructive material [is promoted].”
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“Hip-hop is full of a lot of destructive material; the promotion of violence, the romanticizing of mental health and prescription drugs recreationally — it seems like those things tend to get the most mainstream attention and then anything that speaks out against that, especially in our case, has been suppressed,” he added.
Shapiro also highlighted lyrics from one of rapper Megan Thee Stallion’s top songs, “Hiss,” which is rife with curse words, the n-word, and the promotion of promiscuity, and compared it to some of the lyrics in MacDonald’s song.
“The most offensive lines [from us] are things like, ‘there are only two genders, boys and girls,’ and ‘where did all the American flags go?’,” Shapiro said. “That’s the ‘offensive’ stuff.”
“If we’re gonna make sure the kids don’t see damaging material, we got to stop Tom MacDonald,” Shapiro quipped. “They really do not want us to hit number one on the Billboard charts, obviously.”
The music industry doesn’t “want this song at number one,” MacDonald told Shapiro. “And they certainly don’t want Ben, who has publicly criticized the genre many times — they do not want Ben at the top of the Billboard charts.”