For several glorious months in mid 2016, middle America's favorite instant dinner went completely wild on twitter. Hamburger Helper took it upon themselves to insert Lefty into hip hop culture.
At the beginning of 2016, Hamburger Helper's brand marketing team became notorious on Twitter for sticking their fingers where they seemingly didn't belong by commenting on hip hop news on the brand's Twitter. "Fans" (although I'm hesitant to declare anyone a fan of Hamburger Helper) challenged the team to release a mixtape if they were so into hip hop... and they did.
On April Fools' Day, the brand dropped something that was the furthest thing from a joke: Watch the Stove became live on Soundcloud. The mixtape bearing a title that's clearly an homage to Watch the Throne garnered millions of social media impressions and listens on the app.
The most wild thing about this story is that the mixtape isn't half bad. The brand hired up-and-coming rappers from Minneapolis, where there brand headquarters are located, as well as some stars with internet followings to create the songs for the mixtape. They gave the artists free reign with the songs with the only stipulation being that they had to be songs about Hamburger Helper. The five tracks titled "Feed the Streets", "Hamburger Helper", "Crazy", "Food for Your Soul", and "In Love With the Glove" are part hilarious and part actual songs that go hard as fuck. "In Love With the Glove" is literally a song about a shawty who is in love with the glove and it's absolutely iconic.
Brands across the world with good marketing teams that are actually well versed in hip hop: take note because I'd love to cruise to a Pillsbury Dough Boy mixtape where he raps under the name Pillsbury Flow Boy in the next six months.
