It looks like Pusha T is no longer lovin’ it. In one of the more bizarre, or ingenious, ad campaigns in recent memory, the rapper has partnered with Arby’s to release a diss track aimed at McDonald’s. The advertisement, promoting the sandwich chain’s new fish sandwich while taking aim at the Filet-O-Fish from the golden arches, is all the more absurd considering that Pusha T, in fact, wrote the iconic “I’m lovin’ it” jingle for McDonald’s.
“I’m the reason the whole world love it / now I gotta crush it,” he raps at the start of “Spicy Fish Diss Track.” “Filet-O-Fish is shit / and you should be disgusted / how dare you sell a square fish asking us to trust it / a half a slice of cheese / Mickey D’s on a budget?”
The side-switching is in fact motivated apparently by Pusha T’s bitterness over the small cut he got over the McDonald’s jingle (which is from a longer Justin Timberlake-sung track that the rapper co-wrote) that has become synonymous with the fast-food chain since it began being used in 2003. While speaking to Rolling Stone about the new Arby’s partnership, Pusha T reflected on his part in the “I’m lovin’ it” sound:
“I did it at a very young age at a very young time in my career where I wasn’t asking for as much money and ownership. It’s something that’s always dug at me later in life like, ‘Damnit, I was a part of this and I should have more stake,’” Pusha T says. How much of the jingle he wrote has been in contention over the years, but it seems indisputable that he had a part. “It was like half a million or a million dollars for me and my brother (No Malice of Clipse) — but that’s peanuts for as long as that’s been running. I had to get that energy off me, and this [Arby’s ad] was the perfect way to get that energy like, ‘You know what? I’m over it.’”
