In The Know

Nicki Minaj congratulates Ben Shapiro on ‘#1’ track: ‘not bad’

Rapper Nicki Minaj congratulated conservative commentator Ben Shapiro on his featured rap song with Tom MacDonald dubbed “Facts,” which reached the number-one spot on the U.S. iTunes chart. 

“I just listened to it @benshapiro not bad,” Minaj wrote in a Saturday post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Congrats on #1. But it def sounds like Roman’s Revenge when the beat first came in…idk,” she added, referencing one of her songs. 

Shapiro responded later in a post on X while tagging Minaj, saying that he “didn’t know what I was doing, but I put on a cape. Now it’s, ‘Which world tour should I go on today?'”

The song by Shapiro and MacDonald, whom Rolling Stone characterized as a “far-right troll rapper,” also reached the number-one spot on the hip-hop/rap chart.

“I just want to thank God, @IAMTOMMACDONALD, and my parents, who paid for 15 years of classical violin lessons so I could become the #1 rapper in America,” Shapiro wrote on X on Friday in celebration.

The duo’s song is an anti-woke song in which Shapiro takes shots at multiple artists, including Minaj, with whom he has had a feud before. In June of last year, Shapiro and Minaj had heated Twitter exchanges over the founder of the Daily Wire reacting to a song “Pound Town 2.”  

Some fans were puzzled by Shapiro participating in a rap song, considering he told indie rapper and podcast host Zuby that the genre is not really music.