Before Pharrell Williams was a Grammy-winning artist, he worked at McDonald’s.

In an interview with BBC Radio 2 On Tuesday (November 5), the “Happy” musician, 51, opened up about his brief escapade into fast food.

“McDonald’s was my first and only job,” he told the outlet. “I was fired three times. I ate the chicken nuggets.

He then explained why his time at McDonald’s was so fleeting.

“The first two times it was just because I was lazy,” Pharrell explained. “The third one said to me: ‘What are you doing?’ Are you just sitting there eating nuggets?’

The “Freedom” musician has since had a hugely successful music career that began with his music production duo. The Neptunes alongside Chad Hugo — whom he met in seventh grade — in 1992. Together, they produced several hits including Snoop Dogg“Drop it like it’s hot” Gwen Stefani“Hollaback Girl” by Nelly“Hot in Herre” and Justin Timberlake“Rock Your Body” in the 2000s.

Pharrell, Hugo and drummer Shay Hale formed the band NERD in 1999 and released their debut album, Looking for… three years later.

The “Just a Cloud Away” singer has also found success as a solo artist and with her own collaborations. “Blurred Lines”, his 2005 collaboration with Robin Thicke And ITand “Get Lucky,” his 2013 team-up with Daft Punkbecame top of the charts.

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Pharrell’s song “Happy” became one of the best-selling songs in history with over 13.9 million copies sold.

By Forbes And CNNthe single was also declared the most played song on UK radio in the 2010s and even held the record for longest music video at one point, standing at 24 hours until Twenty-one pilots broke the record in 2020 with a video lasting 177 days.

“When I was about 40, that’s when ‘Get Lucky,’ ‘Blurred Lines,’ ‘Happy,’ all that, it was the same year,” recalls the multi-hyphenate of the trio of tracks in an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music 1. “And they were all songs that were more commissions than they were, I woke up one day and decided I was going to write about X, Y and Z.”

Pharrell has also found success beyond music as a fashion designer with his labels Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream. In 2023, he was chosen as men’s creative director of Louis Vuitton.