Musician Pharrell Williams had his share of struggles during his formative years. In a November 4, 2024 interview with BBC, the musician revealed that he was fired from McDonald’s thrice. However, the reason behind him getting sacked was due to his love for nuggets. Williams said,
“McDonald's, my first and only job, got fired three times. I was eating the chicken nuggets. It got me in trouble. I got fired three times. Not for the same thing. The first two times, it was just because I was lazy.”
He continued,
“The third time, it was just kind of like, 'Dude, what are you doing? Why are you just sitting there eating nuggets? What are you doing?'”
Pharrell Williams also described how he found the combination of sweet and sour sauce with a chicken nugget an almost magical blend. As a child who enjoyed experimenting with flavors, he would dip one nugget in sweet and sour sauce and the next in ranch, alternating between the two.
Although Pharrell Williams had been dismissed from the chain restaurant multiple times, he eventually collaborated with McDonald's on a jingle in the early 2000s. He found the situation ironic and amusing, as he shared on Hot Ones in October 2024.
He also created Justin Timberlake's 2003 single I'm Lovin' It as part of the singer's endorsement deal with McDonald's. The song included the brand's now-iconic ba da ba ba ba jingle, leading to ad executives Tom Batoy, Franco Tortora, and Andreas Forberger also receiving songwriting credits.
Pharrell Williams shared McDonald’s approached him to make the song
Pharrell Williams clarified that his involvement was with the song inspired by the jingle, not the creation of the jingle itself. He shared on Hot Ones that McDonald's had approached his team with the jingle and asked them to turn it into a full song.
It wasn’t as though he had independently come up with "da da da da da, I'm loving it"; rather, they were given the idea and concept to build upon. He said,
“I think people think that I was like, 'Wait a second, hold on, it's going to be three das or whatever it is, five, and I'm loving it.’ That's not what happened. It was more of them saying, 'Can you make a song out of this?' And we were like, 'Yeah, sure.'”
As per Rolling Stone, McDonald’s reportedly paid Justin Timberlake $6 million to perform I'm Lovin' It. In an interview with Hot 97’s Ebro Darden, Steve Stoute, CEO of the marketing firm Translation, which developed the campaign, revealed that rapper Pusha T was the writer behind the catchy jingle.
Stoute, formerly a record executive with Sony and Interscope, noted that the campaign was one of Translation’s earliest major projects. When Ebro credited the I’m Lovin’ It campaign to Pharrell Williams and Timberlake, Stoute disclosed Pusha T’s role, expressing surprise at the artist’s unrecognized contribution.
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In a 2022 interview with Rolling Stone, Pusha T recalled with a laugh that he had taken on the project early in his career when he wasn’t negotiating for significant money or ownership stakes. Later, he felt regret, realizing he deserved a larger stake for his contribution.
While he and his brother earned around half a million to a million dollars, he considered it a modest amount given how long the campaign had endured. Creating this new ad allowed him to finally let go of that lingering frustration, feeling a sense of closure and moving forward.
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