Wendy's, a multi-billion dollar fast-food company known for their Frosty's, average food, and stellar social media usage, have once again one-upped their competition in the advertising department; this time through the magic of music.
The chain restaurant's Twitter account released a teaser for fans on March 21st for their upcoming project with the tagline, "Fresh, never frozen beats."
A few days later, they dropped their 5 song mixtape.
The songs generally target their largest rivals McDonald's and Burger King with eloquent and poetic lyrics like, "Can't be no king, yo' burgers ain't the finest thing" or "You number one? That's a joke/ Why your ice cream machine always broke?/ Why your drive-thru always slow/ Why your innovation can't grow".
The artist behind the new tunes stays true to the Wendy mantra of "fresh, never frozen beef", delivering bar after bar of pure-meaty roasts. Personally, my favorite line from the work is probably when Wendy's attempts to end Ronald McDonald's whole career with, "Leave you in shame, make you run back to Cirque du Soleil/ That’s cold game, but what you expect from tryna play/ Won’t say no names but you a clown, get it, ok?" in 'Clownin'.
The masterminds behind Wendy's 'savage' tweets continue to exhibit ZERO chill and do so anonymously: the artist's name officially appears as 'At Wendy's'. The creators went above and beyond with their album drop, updating the lyrics and annotating them on Genius.com.
Musically, the mixtape's brilliance lies within it's cut-throat, refreshingly 'corny' lyricism, but the beats aren't too disappointing. The bass and tempo are generally mellow and similar on all the songs (aside from Track #3, 'Rest in Grease' which has a pretty hype rhythm throughout). The artist isn't a heavy ad-libber either and instead lets her words speak profoundly for themselves.Her flow gets a little rocky with some of the more forced rhyme patterns, but the undeniable confidence and swagger in her voice saves the delivery. The whole album is reminiscent of Drake's 2015 single "Back to Back" (which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rap Performance), in which Drake responded to Meek Mill's comments on Twitter with a ruthless diss track. This time, however, Wendy's didn't even wait for outside instigation.
The project is unique; combining the multi-billion dollar industries of music and fast-food while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of what social media or marketing teams can use to promote their products.
Wendy's branching out into more unconventional and less reserved means of advertising proves to be an effective way of interacting with their customers in a more technologically-evolved world. They've especially made an impact on their younger generation of clientele and that should prove to help their business production significantly in the near future.
It'll be interesting to see how McDonald's, Burger King, or any other fast food corporations will respond. We might have ourselves an impending rap battle on our hands and I'm not sure whether to be excited or a little horrified of where our society has come to. Either way, give 'We Beefin?' a listen and let me know what you think about this soon-to-be-confirmed classic mixtape of hilarious bangers.