10/03/2026
A story claiming a McDonald’s employee was fired after secretly replacing Happy Meal toys with copies of his own mixtape has circulated online for years, but the incident did not actually happen.
The story first appeared in 2015 on Huzlers, a satire website known for publishing fictional stories presented in a news-like format.
It claimed a Chicago employee named Tyshaun Granger had been slipping a mixtape titled “Tales Of A Real N*gga” into children’s Happy Meals instead of the usual toys.
The post also included a supposed customer complaint about the music.
Multiple outlets investigated the claim at the time.
Complex reported that the story came from Huzlers and was satire, while GQ traced the photograph used with the story to Theodore Levon Upshaw, a real former McDonald’s employee who had been arrested in 2014 on allegations of selling her*in at the restaurant.
There is no evidence that Upshaw was the person described in the mixtape story.
The claim resurfaced in later years with slightly altered versions and names, but fact-checkers again found it to be fabricated.
Lead Stories specifically documented that a 2018 version was another rewrite of the original hoax.
So while the idea of an employee using Happy Meals to promote a rap project may sound believable, the viral story is fiction, not a real McDonald’s firing.
The post continues to resurface because its unusual premise fits outrageous music stories that spread quickly online across social platforms.