MacDonald is likely the most famous artist in a budding genre of his own creation: right-wing protest rap.
At the highest valuations, celebrities like Joe Rogan have been able to build some of the most popular individual brands in America - in Rogan’s case, amid calls for him to be deplatformed for everything from vaccine misinformation to a number of since-deleted episodes in which the host routinely says the n-word.
In all of MacDonald’s body of work, his favorite target is wokeness.Ĭonversations about free speech and cancel culture have created a cottage industry for public figures willing to use language that many people might find offensive. “Be aware” sounds a lot like “stay woke.” But don’t be fooled. “But like my whole thing is, like, be aware.” It’s Fox News and CNN and whoever the fuck else - R olling S tone.” It’s also Tom MacDonald, he concedes. “I think a lot of people benefit from social unrest and civil conflict,” he tells me matter-of-factly. He acknowledges extreme positions benefit him. Although he also makes pop punk about breakups and moody tracks about sobriety, those never seem to blow up the same way. MacDonald’s music since “Whiteboy” has been a steady stream of ever-more-viral tracks trashing Black Lives Matter, fat acceptance, and whatever other liberal boogeyman was on Fox News that week. He suggests that he isn’t against abortion, or gun control, that he watches videos about “intersectionality.” All of which throws me off. Of course, he brought this upon himself.įour years after “Whiteboy,” MacDonald is eager to “show people I’m not just some brainwashed right-wing zombie.” When we spend time together this winter at his place, he’s ultra-paranoid about Covid, requiring us to stay masked and socially distanced even outdoors. “That freaked me the fuck out,” he said, claiming that, as a Canadian, he was unaware of the chaos his track would unleash.
MacDonald said he spent hours deleting their comments celebrating him. Eventually, white nationalists discovered the song. Even if you’ve never seen the video for “Whiteboy,” you know precisely the type of person who would put it on repeat. Those reactions, he hoped, would “spark the conversation.”īut MacDonald started something more vicious than a conversation. He says that he wanted viewers to get pissed off. Almost as if it were an HBO Max original, MacDonald released an accompanying behind-the-scenes clip where he describes the concept of the song. “Cringing With Whiteboy,” a reaction video, is currently sitting around 1.6 million views. The rest of the classroom begins to taunt him: “White boy, don’t say that/White boy, you so bad.” MacDonald overpowers them with a scream of anguish, his voice rising above all the others in the room: “White boy, white noise, saying shit I can’t say with my white voice.” Naturally, there are viral videos mocking the song. The teacher, played by a Black actor, tries to quiet MacDonald down, waving his arms and wordlessly shouting. Just as he starts rapping about how he shouldn’t have to feel bad for being white, the students start to make faces and throw paper at him. It’s set in a Southern California classroom where the musician, who is white, wears blond box braids and sits at a desk in a row of bored-looking students.
In case you're still in the dark on this topic, here are 25 totally vile things men do when they think no one is looking.Perhaps you’ve seen the music video for “Whiteboy,” which currently has more than 22 million views on YouTube and made a minor celebrity of a carpenter turned pro wrestler turned rapper named Tom MacDonald. We asked some guys what gross behavior they're guilty of when they're alone, and, I gotta say, even I found myself gagging a bit. We may like to sniff our crotches every time we pee, or admire the lovely swirling of our period blood in the toilet, but at least we know when to change our sheets and would never, ever think of sending one of our friends a photo of our poop. While, based on my own alone behavior, I’ve always assumed women take the cake on disgustingness, crowdsourcing the men in my life made me realize we’re actually pretty tame in our behavior. Couples are gross in their relationships, women are totally disgusting in the stuff we do when we’re alone, and yes, dudes, too, are pretty nauseating when they’re left to their own devices. As much as we like to pretend we’re perfectly clean and sterile little flowers that always smell good and always behave appropriately, we are not. In case you haven’t noticed, human beings are gross.