Hip-hop and fast-food jingles just don’t fit right into the same sentence, but Pusha T will tell you otherwise.
It all began in 2003, when the Daytona MC was active mostly as one half of Clipse alongside his brother, No Malice. The duo, despite writing the “I’m Lovin’ It” song that defines McDonald’s to this day, was never properly compensated for their work. This felt particularly insulting to the two when they learned that Justin Timberlake got paid $6 million to record the same tune.
Two decades later, Push is still salty about being wronged, and rightfully so. Watching his song gain all the traction it did since he wrote it all those years ago clearly didn’t sit well with the 46-year-old rapper, so he pivoted and wrote a jingle for Arby’s instead. The “Spicy Fish Diss Track” was everything he needed to blow off some steam regarding the no-royalties deal he was tricked into by McDonald’s.
“I’m the reason the whole world love it,” he raps in the commercial. “Now I gotta crush it/Filet-O-Fish is shit and you should be disgusted/How dare you sell a square fish asking us to trust it/A half slice of cheese, Mickey D’s on a budget? Arby’s Crispy Fish is simply it/With lines ’round the corner we might need a guest list/Exit stage left the sandwiches taste fresh/A little cube of fish from a clown is basic.”
Furthermore, Push still gets paid by Arby’s because an ad campaign they’re currently running uses a sample of a song he recorded years ago. During a recent interview with Idea Generation, record executive and artist manager Steven Victor revealed that Pusha’s verse on “Burial” by Yogi still gets him paid to this day.
“I think convincing Pusha to rap on Yogi’s beat,” he mentioned while discussing his best business moves. “And it ended up being the theme song for Arby’s.”
He continued: “If you watch an Arby’s commercial — at the end of it, it goes, ‘Arby’s — we have the meats. That’s the song! They don’t even use Pusha’s part. But they have to pay him, because he owns 50 percent of the song. So, every time they want to sync the song, they have to come to us for approval.”
Pusha’s involvement in the fast-food world is certainly off-brand, but the fact that he’s found a way to get paid from it for so long is quite fitting given that his character is centered on hustle. Arby’s has been using the aforementioned sample for over seven years now, so King Push needn’t worry about what others have to say.
Cover Photo By Leigh Vogel
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