Elsewhere      11/21/2008  

Taco Bell Calls Fitty A Common Street Thug

The Feedbag would like to draft the following open letter to Taco Bell:

Dear Taco Bell,

We wouldn’t mess with Fitty if we were you.

Sincerely,
The Feedbag.

For a quick recap of rapper-chain relations, it all started in June with an open letter from Taco Bell to 50 Cent asking him to change his name to some taco-related denomination (89 Cent? 99 Cent, maybe?) for a day. If Fitty rapped his order at a drive-thru window, Taco Bell then promised to donate $10K to any charity of the his choosing. Fitty played no part in the making of the ad, but fans quickly accused him of selling out. And so: rapper sued chain for $4M. Which brings everyone up to speed. Now, onto the name-calling.

The Daily News reports:

In unusually nasty court filings, Taco Bell called Fitty a common street thug who’s trying to look tough. The rapper is a “self-described former drug dealer and hustler” whose “gangsta rap” is associated with violent criminals, Taco Bell wrote to [a] Manhattan Federal Judge… “[50 Cent] has used his colorful past to cultivate a public image of belligerence and arrogance and has a well-publicized track record of making threats, starting feuds and filing lawsuits,” Taco Bell lawyer Robert Lehrburger wrote in September. “At the same time, [he] holds himself out as a giver to charity and one who wants to give back to his community. This lawsuit is another of [Fitty]’s attempts to burnish his gangsta rapper persona.”

We might at this point describe Taco bell as a petty chain that’s trying to look tough, a self-described good-faith company that’s slapdashly covering up its mistake, but maybe we’ll just put that in our next open letter.

Daily News: 50 Gets His Taco Bell Rung

-Stephanie Shih

Comments

Leave a Reply