A Georgia Waffle House worker has been fired soon after going wildly viral with a rap video he filmed at work.
Edric Riley got millions of views — and a glowing profile on CBS News — for the perfomance he gave in the kitchen under his stage name, Rockstar Riley.
The footage showed him rapping favoriably about his wiorkplace in front of grinning staff and colleagues, with him also telling his followers to “go stop at your local Waffle House!!!!”
But Riley told TMZ he was let go after reporting for his shift last week in Sandy Springs, Georgia, where he said he had worked for 20 years.
His termination particularly stung, he said, because Waffle House was his first job as a teenager.
In the viral video, Riley rapped about the chain — which he dubbed “The Waffy” — while in uniform behind the counter, touting its famous menu offerings to a hip-hop beat.
“Welcome to The Waffy, where you know that we got options/ You can get the All-Star breakfast that comes with a waffle,” Riley raps about one of the eatery’s customer-favorite menu items.
“When everything else closing come to us cause we stay open/ America’s greatest diner still growing, y’all can’t stop it,” he rapped, touting the chain’s famous reluctance to close except under the most dire of circumstances.
The wholesome video, which appears to have been shot by a customer, pans around the restaurants to show patrons smiling and grooving along with his breakfast-centric rhymes.
“Yes I’m the king of The Waffy,” he continues. “Tell me ‘bout the taste that you crave for the day imma whip it up quick as you want.”
“You can pull up at any location, we’ll welcome you in,” he says. “You can sit with a friend, take you to your seat with a smile and a grin.”
Riley had been previously warned to delete social media posts in which he was wearing the uniform, but TMZ said he disobeyed and kept creating content until he was eventually fired.
Despite his termination, he told the outlet he’d be thrilled to work with the breakfast chain on an official commercial using his rap.
“I’m not going to lie, if that opportunity came, I would love to do it hands down,” Riley said. “I love Waffle House.”
Riley started a GoFundMe campaign after his firing and has raised over $1,700.
“I gave that company years of loyalty, hard work, and dedication,” he said in the fundraiser, saying his video “helped bring them attention and better sales.”
“Instead of feeling supported or appreciated, I was let go. After everything I poured into that job, this has been painful, disappointing, and honestly hard to process.”
Waffle House does not appear to have addressed the firing and did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
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