Hip-hop star Nelly has revealed that Taylor Swift once paid him for a show appearance with $50,000 cash stashed in a McDonald's bag.
The gig in question was the Houston leg of Swift's 2011 Speak Now World Tour, which saw the then-21-year-old bring new hits like Mean, Back to December, and Mine to arenas across the globe.
Despite this, the pop star's budget was pretty modest at the time, and in a recent appearance on The Breakfast Club podcast, Nelly revealed an unusual tactic for getting around that.
"She called me one night, just out of the blue, and said, ‘Yo, Nelly, listen, me and my friends, we made a routine to Hot in Herre last night and I wanna ask you a really big favor... I got two shows in Houston tomorrow and the next day. Can you come down to Houston and just perform it?"
He continued: “Now, listen to her. She says she doesn’t really have a budget. But she said, ‘What I will do is send my plane. I’ll get your room and all of that. And we only have like $50,000.’ I said, ‘Can you put that in a McDonald’s bag?’"
According to Nelly, Swift's G5 private jet landed in St. Louis, picked up Nelly and his family, and delivered them to Houston for the shows. After performing, the hip-hop artist received a handsome — but less than glamorous — piece of remuneration.
"We did it, and she was like, ‘Yo, three minutes, three minutes!’ Her [manager Robert Allen] comes out and tosses me a McDonald’s bag with $50,000 in cash. We never even saw the room. We went from the show right back to the airport."
It's a testament to the jaw-dropping power and status Swift commanded even in those early days — the kind of power that causes modern rap icons to up sticks at the drop of a hat.
"The money wasn't really the issue," he said. "I would’ve done it for free.'"
