Nelly Says Taylor Swift Paid Him $50,000 in a McDonald's Bag, and He'd Have Done It Free
On The Breakfast Club, the rapper recalled a surprise Houston appearance, a private jet and a pop star explaining she didn't really have a budget.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
Nelly went on The Breakfast Club with his wife, Ashanti, to promote their reality show, and along the way he told a story more entertaining than anything that's ever happened on a reality show. Taylor Swift, he said, once rang him up out of nowhere. She was playing Houston the next couple of nights, she and her friends had worked out a routine to "Hot in Herre," and would he come do it.
Then, by his account, she explained that she didn't really have a budget for this kind of thing, and she offered him $50,000. Now, I've worked for people with no budget. They paid in exposure, a sandwich and, on one memorable occasion, a coupon. Nobody with no budget has ever said the number fifty thousand out loud without being a kidnapper.
Nelly, a man of some wit, asked whether she could put it in a McDonald's bag. And he says that when he got to the stadium, somebody on her team handed him a McDonald's bag with the money in it. I've thought about this for most of a day. Somewhere there's a person with a college degree whose job, that afternoon, was to count $50,000 into a sack meant for a Quarter Pounder. I hope they kept the receipt. I hope they got the fries, too, because it would be a crime to waste the bag.
The budget that Swift didn't have also extended, Nelly says, to a G5 to pick up him and his kids in St. Louis, and a presidential suite when they landed. That's the no-budget version. I'd like to see what she does when she's got a little set aside. He added that he would have done it for free, which he's now told the whole country, so his rates may need a look.
One wrinkle: Nelly didn't name a year. A 2011 Complex report has him joining her in Houston, but says they did "Just a Dream," not "Hot in Herre." So either there were two songs, or two nights, or a man has been telling this one at parties for 15 years and it's picked up some weight, the way we all do. I don't care. I wouldn't check it if you paid me, unless it was in a bag.
And that's the whole of what I've learned about the rich. When a wealthy person tells you there's no money, it's like a lake telling you it's been a dry year.