In my last blog, I reviewed a song by a YouTube rapper known as Crypt called "YouTube Cypher Vol. 2". In the song, Crypt bands together twelve other YouTube rappers (with himself tagged on at the end to make it 13) and they all take turns boast rapping for a solid 12 minutes. Among this set of rappers was a man named Mac Lethal. Simply put, Lethal is a legend in the YouTube rap community. He made a name for himself via battle rap back in the day, his YouTube channel has over 229 million total views, and he usually likes to rap extremely fast in his videos. All in all, as an artist, I'm a fan of Mac. He's in my top five as far as rappers go. A few months ago, Mac got into a little bit of a beef with an artist named Tom MacDonald following a couple vague Tweets Mac put out. Tom thought they were about him (and, frankly, so do I), they went back and forth on Twitter and Instagram, and then Tom took it to YouTube by dropping a diss track on Mac. There were three tracks, two from Tom and one from Lethal, and then it ended. Yes, it's been a few months since the beef happened. Yes, I probably should've covered this sooner. I gave it a few months cause I was waiting to see what else would happen, and, given how both of the artists have released new, non-diss-track songs, I think it's safe to say that now is the right time to cover this beef. If you're unfamiliar with Tom MacDonald, he's a rapper that is mostly known for his songs "WHITEBOY" and "Straight White Male". Needless to say, those songs are very politically charged, and he's garnered a bit of controversy for making them. Personally, I prefer his music when it isn't stuff like "If I Was Black". I understand the points he's trying to make, I just don't think he's making the points all that well. Tom certainly isn't a bad artist at all, though. I like his voice, his aesthetic is nice, and the production quality on his videos is good. But, anyway, Mac Lethal vs Tom MacDonald. We got three songs to look at, so it's best if we just get straight to them. This website won't let me post the videos themselves, so I'll upload still frames from each video and then link you to the songs underneath. Sound fair?
Round 1 - "Lethal Injection"
This was a solid start to the rap portion of this beef. The beat is catchy, I like the black and white filter the video had, Tom had a very laid-back, "I'm not even trying" vibe to his flow, the cinematography is nice. On a technical level, this is a good video. And the song itself is enjoyable, too. Lyrically speaking, it's a mixed bag, but it's still a fun time. The disses land more often than they don't, which is good. Let's go ahead and address all the things I didn't vibe with in this song: There were way too many old jokes. Tom made eight references to Mac's age, and only two of them were any good. "Who gave this old man Twitter" was funny, and "mid-life crisis with writer's block" is a fun way of belittling Mac's career. Other than that, the amount of age lines was unnecessary. The word "old" is used a grand total of seven times throughout. Granted, not all of the usages were referring to Mac's age, but it's still about five too many. It's fine to bring up someone's age in a diss track once or twice, but, if you do it eight times, you start to look like you don't have much to say. I also can't get behind the "It's 2019, just admit that you're queer" line. It really doesn't make sense in the context of the scheme it rests in, and I'm also personally just not a big fan of gay jokes in general. The rest of the time, though, the lyrics are quite good. The joke about Insane Clown Posse was great, "How you say so much and have nothing to say" was funny, the "flat tires" bit was nice, the oxycotton joke was insane. There were a few too many relevancy jokes, but all of them were worded very well. They hit hard enough to make up for the amount. "I'm here to revive your career" is one of the best lines in the song, if you ask me. Out of all of the best lines, my favorite has got to be "We kept Lethal, but we lost Miller". That is powerful. There were a couple good jabs to Mac's drug abuse past, the "Reinstall Mac" line was dope, "Your biggest record was a cover song" is a nice body blow, the references to Mac being a father were good, and I thought Tom ending this song by saying his name was really smart. The "backpeddling" section was a nice way of tying the Tweets back into it, I liked the "flipping burgers" bit (even if those kinds of disses are a little overdone at this point). Songs like this show that Tom is a better lyricist than most people give him credit for, he definitely left me impressed after watching it for the first time. I liked how Tom put the Tweets and Instagram posts at the beginning so that people can catch up on the lore while the beat built up. It also helps so that newcomers to Tom (like I was when this song dropped) can have a better understanding of who he is, as well as catching more of the jabs. Overall, it's a solid 6.5/10 for me. "Lethal Injection" is a very good name, by the way. I like it.
Round 2 - "Single White Female"
And then in comes Mac to completely blow "Lethal Injection" out of the water. Keep in mind that Mac came up as a battle rapper as I give my thoughts on this song. Firstly, I love the fact that Mac never once refers to Tom by his actual name. He calls him "Tammy MacDogfart", which is objectively funny. I love the old-school sounding beat Mac raps over, it has a very "battle rap" vibe to it (which is perfect for Mac). Also, one of Tom's lines against Mac was "Someone tell him, when he mentions me, do research first", it was the second line of that whole song. Well, Tom, it looks like Mac took your advice. Half of "Single White Female" was Mac dissing Tom, and the other half was Mac exposing Tom. There were a lot of things about Tom's past brought to the spotlight that I didn't know about, and it really made me look at Tom differently. That's the way a good diss track should go. If you're coming at someone, you gotta come at them with everything you have. Mention things about them that most people don't know about them. Some examples: Tom was a wrestler in school, Tom's girlfriend ghostwrites half his raps, Tom is a Canadian making songs about the sad state of America. All these things that I, as well as most people that followed this beef, didn't know about. That is how you do a proper diss track. You gotta hit your opponent with the hurtful stuff and the exposing stuff, and Mac came through with both. When he wasn't tearing down Tom's entire style, Mac was coming in from basically every angle. My favorite set of lines bar none was the section near the beginning in which Mac calls Tom out for making songs about how people today are too sensitive, but then getting put in his feelings by a vague Tweet so badly that he made an entire song in response. That is nasty, because it's essentially a verbal slap in the face. The "filler/fill her" bars were insane, Mac's way of nullifying Tom's ICP diss was great, "Methlemore" is probably the single best thing I've ever heard in a rap song. Speaking of that, all of the comparisons were nice (even if there were a few too many of them). The best ones were comparing Tom to Candace Owens, Elsa, and Billie Eilish. I love the way Mac ended this song, which was by belittling Tom even down to his name. That's a nice way of asserting your dominance. So, in case it wasn't obvious, I enjoyed this song much more than I enjoyed Tom's. That's not to say "Single White Female" was perfect, though, putting aside how clever the name is. There were a couple things about this song that I clashed with a bit. Firstly, his line about his most popular video topping Tom's entire channel as far as views go is just not true. Mac's biggest video is sitting at 39 million views, while Tom's channel is sitting at over 77 million total views. That would've been an amazing bar had it been a factual bar, but it wasn't. I also don't vibe with all the gay jokes Mac told regarding Tom's wrestling outfit. Tom spared us by only telling that one gay joke, then Mac came back with an entire octuplet of lines full of them. It isn't that the jokes are bad (the H.O.G. one was the best one easily), it's just I don't particularly find them to be funny. The "Oh, let's watch this wrestling video" thing before he showed the wrestling video was kinda redundant, given the fact that we already were watching the wrestling video. There's also a split second editing goof that shows a random frame of Mac screaming before we starts riffing on Tom's weird wrestling maneuver. I'll assume it's Mac's inner demons trying to break free. The AIDS joke was weird, felt like a forced joke put there for filler. But, overall, this is a much better track than "Lethal Injection" was. It was hilarious, Mac's flow was so good, the lyricism was great. It's an 8.5/10, for sure. It's gonna be really tough to top this one, yeesh.
Round 3 - "Mac Lethal Sucks"
Putting aside the fact that the title of this song is super boring when compared to the first one, this is a really good response to Mac's diss. By all accounts, it's a massive step up from "Lethal Injection". The general consensus is that Mac's song topped Tom's first song, and I agree with that for sure, but then Tom came back with a Superman punch to the jaw. It turns out that I was right to initially feel like Tom was just kinda goofing around during "Lethal Injection", cause he definitely wasn't pulling any punches here. Right off the bat, this song has a much better beat than his first one did. It sounds like a trap beat, which is good style of beat to rap over if you're making a diss track. Vocally, Tom sounds a lot better here than he did before. His voice has more confidence, more aggression, and, by the same token, a heightened sense of goofiness. It sounds like whatever plan he had is playing out more or less exactly the way he had hoped it would. On the topic of improvements, the lyrics are also better here than they were before. Aside from the odd anti-insult here and there (like, for example, bringing up Mac's eight-year sobriety and trying to use that as a diss), there were a lot more heavy-hitting lines in this song. The Chris Benoit reference was easily the biggest pill to swallow out of all of the lyrics, so much so that I really don't know what to make of it. On one hand, it's a monstrous line that would be tough for anybody you're battling to come back from. On the other hand, what purpose does it serve other than "I was a wrestler, so here's a famous wrestler you know"? Still, though, I would have killed to have seen Mac's reaction to it. I liked the way Tom nullified some of the points Mac brought up in his song, although I didn't care for the use of the word "retard" in both of Tom's songs. Could've gone without that, personally. Some of the lyrics involve Tom going back to points he made in his first song, such as Mac's age or his past drug addiction (although he hits the points in better ways, which makes up for it in my opinion), but he also goes at new things about Mac. He brings up events in Mac's life that I didn't know (although not nearly to the extent that Mac did to Tom), like the "Caught pants down with another man's girlfriend" line, the MTV bars, the fact that Mac has a pet bird. There were also some crazy schemes in here, like the bit about Tom sending Mac's wife's eggs away on a plane, both of the "piece of crap" bits (although I'll admit that it felt a little forced when he did it the second time), and the long bit about turning Mac's ashes into a statue of Tom. He goes bonkers on this song, which was so much fun to see. The song ends with the same set of four bars that "Lethal Injection" ended with, which, again, I think is smart. There were some really nice flow switches here, including a section near the end where Tom mimicks the triple time flow that Mac's famous for. Hearing Tom rap that fast was pretty cool, and his enunciation was clear for half of it, but his words started to slur in the middle as he went on. Tom's energy on this track was great, the music video was nice (I love the shots of his silhouette against a white background), he has a much more jovial demeanor here. A part of me wishes he had started off with a track of this caliber. Now that "Mac Lethal Sucks" is out there, Tom's initial claim of "David, I'm tryna be nice" holds a lot of weight. All in all, this song is a major step up from the first one. I really enjoyed this one. It had a better beat, better punches, better flows, better energy. This is a great response to "Single White Female". It got a little repetitive at times, but that doesn't stop this from being a fun listen. Also, "If you did a drive-by, I'd wave" is just awesome. You can't convince me otherwise. 8/10.
Kinda sucks that Mac never responded, but I respect him for sticking to his "one and done" strategy. It puts him above Tom in that respect. He did release a song called "MAC LETHAL SUCKS PT. 2", but it wasn't a response track. It was a deep, analytical view of life, as well as the announcement of Mac's new album (I'll assume "rapping is your hobby" got to him). So, who won? Well, let's break this down from a logical standpoint. Tom got two songs worth of shots in, Mac only had one. As far as all the hard-hitting, reputation-damaging jabs go, by my count: "Lethal Injection" had seven, "Single White Female" had fifteen, and "Mac Lethal Sucks" had eighteen. Mac had a much better first outing than Tom did, but then he didn't attempt to counter Tom's second shot. As I said earlier, that earns Mac a lot of respect points from me. However, that doesn't help him much as far as the battle itself goes. Tom fired at Mac, Mac brushed it off without breaking a sweat, Tom came back stronger with a more powerful shot, and Mac just sat there and took it. It's respectable, sure, but I would've fired back at Tom one last time to really season the beef. If I'm being completely honest, "Single White Female" was a better song that both of Tom's shots. The fact remains, however, that Tom still said more at the end of the day. If you add up the points I listed earlier, Tom comes out of it with ten more points than Mac. For that reason, I'm casting my vote for Tom MacDonald. I think he took the win in this case. Mac put up a great fight, winning the first set for sure, but Tom ultimately took the whole match. In my opinion, at least. Now that that's out of the way, I can move on to covering other recent rap beefs in the future. I plan on going over Enimen vs MGK and Dax vs all the YouTube rappers at some point, and Tom's apparently found himself back in the frying pan. I'll cover the Trapp Tarell business when it settles down. Until then, thanks for reading, and have a blesses day.
