Taco Bell Learns the Hard Way How Much 50 Cent Is Worth

Fast Food Chain Incenses Rapper With Offer to Change His Name, Rap Order for Charity

Posted by Charlie Moran on 06.19.08 @ 03:20 PM

So much for a cheap press-release-driven promotional stunt. This one has blown up in Taco Bell's face like all those awful Fiery Hot salsa packets that never seem to make it onto your plate.

Yesterday, one of OK! Magazine's dogged reporters delivered an exclusive scoop: TB was to offer $10,000 to any charity if 50 Cent would change his name to "79, 89, or 99 Cent" for one day this summer. After consulting with his lawyers on how to legally change his name for 24 hours, he would then have to pull up to a TB drive-thru window and rap his order before the money would be delivered to the orphans. This sounds more like a list of nutty ransom demands than a marketing ploy, but what do we know? We just blog.

We were tickled by the sadness of it all, but Fiddy & Co. are pretty angry. Not only do they find the offer repulsive on moral grounds, but they're also angry because OK! published the "news" before the man himself had formally received the offer.

"This is a sleazy and ill-conceived publicity stunt by Taco Bell's president, Greg Creed, whose disingenuous offer was leaked to the press before it was even presented to 50 Cent's agent yesterday," a rep for 50 Cent tells OK!

Fiddy himself adds, "When my legal team is finished with them, Taco Bell is going to have a new corporate slogan: 'We messed with the bull and got the horns!'"

Doesn't Taco Bell know that 50 wouldn't stop to pick up a pack of 10 Gs if it were left on the sidewalk with a bow on it? Listen: Drafting releases asking celebrities to do insane things is fun, but why make it so complicated and why offer such a paltry sum to a billionaire? Further, why leak the news to OK! before the deal was notarized? If 50 is really smart, he'll air-drop $100,000 worth of Gorditas into Sub-Saharan Africa just to show them what's up.

[OK! via ProHipHop]