Down is up, ya’ll. The best music I’ve heard all month is a hip-hop EP released by Wendy’s. Yes, that redhead with pigtails is apparently a rapper now, too. The fast food chain’s first mixtape, We Beefin?, pulls no punches against rivals like McDonald’s and Burger King.
It all started on March 21, when Wendy’s teased the EP with a tweet:
Two days later, Wendy’s dropped their first EP and I’ve had it on loop ever since. It’s so great that I actually went to Wendy’s for the first time since I was in junior high. I ordered a No. 5, a Son of Baconator with fries and a drink for the uninitiated, and subbed a vanilla Frosty for a soda.
Let’s talk about the food for a minute. The vanilla Frosty tasted like a legit malt at first, but then I realized it is basically just soft serve in a cup. The fries suck. They are soggy, not the least bit salty, and taste like freezer burn. Wendy’s claims their beef is “Fresh Never Frozen,” but I guess the fries are a different story.
And let’s talk about that beef. I shudder to imagine the size of the father because Son of Baconator is a beast. This is a double bacon cheeseburger with bacon sitting both in between and on top of the hamburger patties, for crying out loud. But there’s some weird shit going on here. I guess Wendy’s doesn’t even bother with vegetables because my Son of Baconator just had mayonnaise and ketchup on it. And why is the beef square? That’s freakish.
But that brings us back to the music. The album art is a bold reference to The Notorious B.I.G.’s perennial classic from 1994, Ready to Die. But instead of a baby, there’s one of those square patties at the center of this white backdrop. Fast food advertisements often reference sex, but I guess fast food music recognizes that sex leads to reproduction.
The food and album art are whack, but this music is no joke. The opening track’s title, “Twitter Fingers,” is a play on the words “trigger fingers.” It seems that this diss track has roots on social media, as the lyrics confirm: “You twitter beefin’ for some clout / Yo’ customers in a drought / They loving me with no doubt / I’m sellin’ in large amounts.”
The second track, “Holding It Down,” goes even harder and Wendy’s starts naming names. McDonald’s is called out first: “Mickey *Bleep* was tryna to beef, it’s time to finish now.” Wendy’s has no respect for another rival: “Chicken Shack, you actin’ really wild, quiet that down.” And there’s something for Burger King too: “BK, don’t think that you got away / You copied my old menu and put it on replay.” Ouch.
Wendy puts on a clinic with “Rest in Grease,” which landed at number one on Spotify’s Global Viral 50. She establishes herself as “fast food’s first lady” and taunts rivals by making fun of slow drive thrus and ice cream machines that are always broken. “Clownin” is presumably a dig at the McDonald’s mascot, Ronald McDonald, and the track has sick production. Wendy actually suggests that the clown has paint on his face because he has something to hide.
By the closing track, “4 or 4$,” the fast food chain seems to leave the rivalries behind with a triumphant tone: “Queen Wendy the illest, yeah I said it, boy don’t forget that.”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2018.