Pusha T is one of the best rappers working today. Pusha T has also just released an Arby’s sponsored diss track aimed at taking McDonald’s fish sandwiches down a peg or two. We must now hold these two facts in our minds at the same time and try our best to make them reconcile.
In a video entitled “ARBY’S x PUSHA T | Spicy Fish Diss Track,” you can hear what this collaboration sounds like for yourself. It is, in short, exactly what you’d expected. Over footage of fishing boats and sad clowns, Pusha gives us lines like “Filet-O-Fish is shit and you should be disgusted” and “How dare you sell a square fish, asking us to trust it/ A half slice of cheese, Mickey D’s on a budget”
Corny as this is, we should note that Push ended up working with Arby’s as the result of a preexisting beef with McDonald’s. Way back when, in the early ‘00s, the clown-friendly burgermonger spent a whole lot of money on it’s “I’m Lovin’ It” ad campaign, a lot of which went to Justin Timberlake and not so much to Pusha T, who rapped on a version of the commercial, and is, along with his brother and Clipse counterpart No Malice, at the center of a dispute over its writing credit.
Speaking on this last point to Rolling Stone—and adding new confusion to the writing credit situation in the process—Pusha says he’s “soley responsible for the ‘I’m Lovin’ It’ swag and the jingle of that company. That’s just real. I am the reason.”
“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,” he continues, explaining that the one-time fee he and No Malice were paid is “peanuts for as long as [the ad’s] been running.”
In order to vent this decades-long frustration, Pusha T went to Arby’s in order to “get that energy off me.” He also says he’s made “the first-ever fish sandwich diss ever” in the process and “should go down in history for that.”
This is true and, if nothing else, Pusha’s takedown of one horrible fast food sandwich in favor of another, equally gross-looking option has given us something fun to listen to—a welcome alternative to the greasy vodkas and horrifying anime girlfriend mascots featured in prior Arby’s marketing stunts.
As another plus, two company’s noxious fish burgers going to war with one another is actually more palatable than other public feuds Pusha T has been involved with. At least, we guess, until McDonald’s responds with a track that claims Arby’s has a secret child.
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