Hey guys, straight white male here.
Worst Rappers in the game? is back once again, and today we will be looking at the one and
only Whiteboy, Tom MacDonald.
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So reluctantly, back to Tom MacDonald.
To get an idea of his music I listened to his 2015 album Dream People & The Whisky Wars,
his 2018 album Deathreats, and his most recent singles.
So, after hearing these, is Tom MacDonald one of the worst rappers in the game?
Well this is CDTV, and let’s answer that question right now.
Part 1: Voice + Delivery
The irony with this segment is that Tom criticises mainstream mumble rap for being boring and
repetitive, yet I honestly feel like he has one of those very generic and undefined voices.
Hell, on almost every track on his 2015 album I was able to compare him to someone else,
whether that’s 2014 G Eazy, Lil Dicky doing his emphatic voice or his painful imitations
of 808s & Heartbreak Kanye.
He actually used a surprising amount of autotune on his earlier music, and 90% of the time
its used terribly.
He’s definitely got a little better with using autotune nowadays, and he uses it more
sparingly, so that’s a small plus, he has improved here.
But there’s one thing he hasn’t improved.
these verses are the least of his problems, because one area in which Tom excels in being
uniquely bad is in his god-awful, horrendous hook game.
I can’t think of many worse hooks than the ones you have to endure on Straight White
Male, American Dreamz or Help Is On the Way.
It straight up makes a lot of his songs unlistenable, I am not exaggerating when I say I feel his
Hook game is at least bottom 5 in this series with these off key chorus’s that are either
very over or under-produced.
Honestly one of the only hooks I love is the one on Everybody Hates Me.
It’s legitimately catchy, and fits the tone of the song perfectly.
Its massively helped by the backing vocals, but it did get stuck in my head.
So that’s good.
However, for the most part, I do really feel like his voice doesn’t actually have any
personality to it.
Just listen to his Mac Lethal diss track, none of the bars connect because Tom’s delivery
is as plain as his skin.
(Remember being white is his main personality trait).
But that aside, does he have any other strong points with his vocals?
Well, my favourite tracks from him in this aspect would have to be This House and Hangman.
On these tracks, there’s a constant intensity to his rapping which is a million times more
engaging than the typical vanilla rapping that dominates his music.
I guess overall I’ll give him like, a 3.5/10?
Considering what Tom views his whole image to be, it’s kinda funny that I find his
rapping voice during his verses to be mostly inoffensive, just very plain, but those horrendous
hooks that plague a lot of his material drag down his score from being like a 5.
Part 2: Flow
This is without a doubt the strongest aspect of Tom’s music.
He’s not got the most insane flows I’ve ever heard and doesn’t stray too far away
from the ‘white rapper who loves to rap at a faster pace’ cliche, but he is relatively
good in this area.
For example, the second verse of This House, where the rapid flow matches perfectly with
his more intense delivery against the powerful 808’s.
It’s actually a relatively good verse in terms of songwriting too, so it’s not like
he’s just saying nothing to flow fast which I can appreciate.
And one of the only kinda redeemable things about Dream People & The Whisky Wars is that
Tom had a decent grasp on how to flow back then as well.
I do have the same issue that I noted in the voice segment where a lot of his flows sound
like early G-Eazy or Lil Dicky, but they are fairly enjoyable cadences at least.
Moving back to the present day, I wouldn’t say he sounds like them anymore, his current
music definitely sounds a lot less copy-paste with the flows, but at the same time there’s
nothing mindblowing past some tightly crafted mid-tempo flows.
I think a perfect representation with this is the 4 spoken word tracks that he put on
his album, no beat, just Tom rapping.
If he had mastered the art of a great flow, then these spoken word cuts would be compelling
without any need for a beat.
Ski Mask & JID are great examples of artists who can do this because their flows ooze personality
and rhythm and they use the fact there’s no beat to full creative advantage.
But even when Tom isn’t restricted by the confines of an instrumental, the flows aren’t
all that enthralling.
You have room to experiment with some unorthodox cadences when there isn’t a beat, but there’s
none of that from Tom on any of these spoken word songs.
They’re just fine, but nothing that warrants a super high rating, and this mostly translates
to his songs that do have a beat as well.
I’m gonna settle on a 6/10 for this segment.
Nothing that’s too wild but nothing that’s horrible either.
Part 3: Lyrics
So you’ve heard of the subreddit ‘im14andthisisdeep’ right?
Tom MacDonald should be the musical icon of that subreddit.
I’m not even saying I disagree with every single point Tom makes in his music, because
he has at least a few points that I can agree with, such as how the media traditionally
gives more attention and fame to killers than victims, that’s a point that the most beginner
level twitter activist would agree with so it’s really not THAT deep, but it’s an
agreeable observation.
But most of the time, he either makes awful points, such
as on Dear Rappers where he paints mainstream rap as an evil thing that will destroy your
life if you listen to it, or just blows non-issues wildly out of proportion.
For example, we already know about Whiteboy, the song that will define this man as a meme
for the foreseeable future.
He got called a Culture Vulture one too many time in his YouTube comments and just ******* snapped.
The only solution I can come up with in my head is that Tom is trolling heavy, because
why else would he make a near 5 minute song stating he’s not a racist and that people
should stop judging white people for their pretty blue eyes?
Again, my problem isn’t the overarching theme, I agree that no race should be instantly
assumed to be something, whether they’re white, black, Asian, biracial or otherwise.
It’s the way Tom blows it up as if it’s a huge issue and as if every single non-white
person views Tom as a racist.
We don’t need a song where you subconsciously display you’re uncomfortable because you’re
seemingly very insecure about being a white person in the rap game with braids.
And as with most rappers who are pretentious as hell and portray themselves as rap saviours,
he doesn’t even stick to his own guns and is quite the old hypocrite, which weakens
the value of everything he says.
How can we be sympathetic to your songs about addiction if you poke fun at Mac Lethal’s
past with substance abuse?
How can we be sympathetic to your songs about mental health when you essentially accuse
everyone in mainstream emo rap of faking their depression?
It’s stuff like this that erodes your credibility, when you change your views and personal beliefs
on a whim if it’ll make your song more edgy.
There’s also this on ‘Everybody Hates Me’ where he sings.
If the ‘hate’ is stupid funny then why did you block me for one tweet Tom?
I thought the hate didn’t get to you.
It’s just kinda ironic that someone who criticises others for supposedly being ultra-sensitive
hands out blocks like he works at a Lego store.
Oh and as for his 2015 music, there’s nothing to see here.
It’s boring, some of it comes off as the mainstream raps about drugs and women that
he hates now, he talks about girls and broken relationships an awful lot, but never gives
us real insight into who he is and what makes him different.
At least I can laugh at his attempts to be controversial, I can’t even do that with
his old music because he didn’t start doing the controversy thing until recently.
So that’s that.
Overall, in the current era of his music, his lyrics come off as try-hard, self righteous,
pretentious and very weak satire if it can even be called that, it’s the same as when
Leafy called his videos satire, where he constantly contradicts himself and destroys his own credibility
as a rapper for the sake of trying to trigger people, and it just come off as more sad and
pitiful than offensive or revolutionary.
2/10 for having content, but it’s that low because the content is ****. This House is
a song with a nice extended metaphor though, so take that as you will.
Part 4: Beats
In the words of Dyatlov from the HBO show Chernobyl, Tom MacDonald’s production choice
is not great, not terrible.
Much like his voice, there is not much that stands out about his production choices, except
maybe that time when he went over a country beat on the song Pretend.
Lil Nas X who?
But everything else on his Dream People & Whisky Wars album was either just fine production
wise, or just really cheap and budget sounding, with the most typical 2010 trap beats imaginable
on songs like Worried ‘Bout It or TFAB, or that weird messy instrumental on Murderer.
I’d say my favourite beat he’s used so far is, yet again, probably from Everybody
Hates Me.
That’s legit one of the only Tom MacDonald songs I can mostly enjoy despite his smugness.
I’m almost certain he just looked up Macklemore type beat to get it, but that’s cool, I
like a lot of Macklemore’s upbeat production.
There’s still not a whole lot of beats he chooses that stand out, like he’s not defined
enough sound wise to have his own true “type beats” on YouTube, but I can’t deny that
the overall quality of his production is higher now, with beats like This House and Helluvit
also being pretty great.
So I can say that his beats are sounding better with time as you’d expect, but again his
production choice is just another area Tom is pretty undefined in.
A 5/10 feels pretty fair for this segment in my opinion.
Very few downright horrible beats and if there are, they’re mostly found on his 2015 project.
But there was almost nothing mindblowing or refreshing within his beat choices either
so we’re right in the middle here.
Part 5: Enjoyment
So, did I enjoy listening to Tom MacD- No.
I reckon I would’ve enjoyed his stuff a lot more when I was younger and much more
susceptible to rappers telling me they’re the truth without actually thinking about
it critically, but now that I’m a big old 20 year old, a lot of his music comes off
as arrogant, self congratulatory and rather fake deep.
As I’m sure you can tell from everything I’ve said so far, his album from 2015, Dream
People & The Whisky Wars was the worst part of this experience for me.
Just 90 whole minutes (yes it’s really that long) of someone who didn’t really have
a sound or persona at that point, and was making repetitive, generic songs, many of
which, ironically, focused on partying, drinking and strippers.
The rest were just conventional break up raps.
So yeah, his Deathreats album definitely appealed to me slightly more, because he’s really
settled into his role as the controversial white boy.
But it’s really dragged down by the contradictions I pointed out earlier, his overall egotistical
attitude, and the fact he seems entirely close minded towards other people’s thoughts and
stances, writing them off as ‘haters’ like he’s a kid.
I think he actually described his own personality perfectly with this line.
The main songs I would say I enjoyed from this experience are Everybody Hates Me, Hangman,
thankunothanku, This House & Helluvit if I ignore the lyrical content.
I’m rarely gonna come back to any of his songs though, if I ever do, so I’m just
happy I’m done with this video and won’t have to listen to any Whitey MacWhiteman for
a long time.
2/10 for enjoyment.
Part 6: Verdict + Ranking:
So overall, Tom gets a score of 18.5/50, placing him at number 16 in this series, above Lil
Uzi who will move up past Tom when I re-rank him, and below Blueface.
Ouch.
I’m happy this is done now though, and I can continue to go on ignoring Tom’s music,
as I usually do, while he continues to rap about how much people supposedly care about
him.
Now I just have to look forward to his fans flooding my comments section saying I don’t
get Tom’s music, as if it isn’t some of the most surface level, easy-to- get music
out there.
Can’t wait.
(Outro)