Tom Hardy is rapping about Bane, Green Goblin, Doctor Doom, Misery, Titanic, Shakespeare and Kathy Bates. It’s a wild collection of references that makes perfect sense coming from him.
Recording under the name Frankie Pulitzer, Hardy has teamed with underground hip-hop group Czarface for Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer, an album that lets the actor unload his love of comics, movies and hip-hop into his rhymes.
Hardy has plenty of material from his own career to pull from. He played Bane in The Dark Knight Rises and starred as Eddie Brock and Venom across three Venom movies, followed by a cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Those comic-book connections find their way onto the album. On “Raw Forever,” Hardy drops references to Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, Doctor Doom, Bringing Out the Dead, Dog Day Afternoon and DC Comics character Sergeant Rock.
“Mad Technology” keeps the pop-culture references coming with Thor, Cujo and Misery all making appearances. Shameik Moore, who voices Miles Morales in Sony’s Spider-Verse films, also gets mentioned before Hardy works his way toward an appropriately ridiculous Kathy Bates and Misery punchline.
Things get even weirder on “Grim-Visaged War,” where Hardy performs the famous opening speech from William Shakespeare’s Richard III using the low, intimidating voice that sounds a whole lot like his Bane from The Dark Knight Rises.
If you ever wondered what Shakespeare filtered through Bane might sound like on a rap record, Hardy has apparently decided that question needed an answer.
“Nawing at My Rhyme Like a Poisonous Rat” heads in another cinematic direction, bringing Leonardo DiCaprio and Titanic into Hardy’s collection of movie references.
Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer pairs Hardy with 7L & Esoteric and Wu-Tang Clan member Inspectah Deck, but the actor’s presence in hip-hop isn’t some random celebrity side project.
Hardy was recording music long before he became one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and he has maintained connections to hip-hop throughout his career.
He has previously appeared on Czarface tracks and participated in other musical collaborations over the years. His history as a rapper goes all the way back to 1999, when he recorded the unreleased album Falling on Your Arse in 1999.
Of course, most audiences know Hardy from movies including Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant, Dunkirk, Inception, Legend and Venom. He has become one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors, but his early interest in making music obviously has never completely disappeared.
Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer feels like Hardy having fun with every corner of his pop-culture brain at once. More importantly, we now live in a world where Tom Hardy can essentially rap Shakespeare as Bane.
