I first saw Wendy’s EP “We Beefin?” on Twitter, and my knee-jerk reaction was to let out a sigh and open Spotify to see if it was real.

To my disappointment, it was real.

Also to my disappointment, Wendy’s tried to use the slang term “beefin”.

After finishing the mixtape, I had to take a few seconds to laugh.

Production wise, “We Beefin?” was incredibly average due to its recycled trap beats and samples I’ve heard in almost every modern rap song to hit the top of the charts. If I wasn’t paying attention to the lyrics, I could’ve mistaken it for a song playing on “Power 106.9”. But perhaps that was Wendy’s strategy: to make this nightmare at first glance sound as familiar and widely-appealing as possible.

Wendy’s has been keeping the creators anonymous, but on genius.com, a credible website for song lyrics, Wendy’s verified that one of the top hip-hop producers Metro Boomin co-produced “Holding It Down”. After the initial shock that Metro Boomin himself produced a rap without his famous line “Metro Boomin want some more n***a” and that he worked with Wendy’s, I realized the typical trap beats reflect his past works. If Wendy’s would’ve chosen some zitty teenage boy working at one of their drive-thrus to produce this album, they probably would’ve ended up with a similar product and an extra wad of cash still in their pockets.

As I read the lyrics I couldn’t help but wrinkle my nose. All five songs were sloppy combinations of weak punches at McDonald’s and Burger King and the past few years’ top ten slang terms from Urban Dictionary. The anonymous rapper also references Wendy’s frequent run-ins with fellow fast food companies on Twitter.

It wasn’t hard to figure out that Wendy’s was just trying to “connect with the youth” to get them to be customers since their lyrics were teenage slang and “Twitter beef” over trap beats. It actually wasn’t a bad marketing move despite all the hype on social media being purely sarcastic. Wendy’s effectively regained some long-lost popularity by taking advantage of the teenager’s second home: social media. And for that I praise the marketing side, and the marketing side only, of this mixtape because they know how to grab people’s attention.

The only things I could stand in my 12 minute timeline of discovery and listening was its brevity and the cover artist’s allusion to The Notorious B.I.G.’s debut album “Ready to Die”, which I’m still on the fence about liking considering Wendy’s is the Toby Flenderson of rap. Yeah, that Toby Flenderson.

Take it from me and don’t ever think about “We Beefin?” again. Also take it from me that Wendy’s has amazing Frosties, and I do recommend thinking about those.