The Bobby Shmurda lyric Tom Hardy nearly snuck into ‘The Revenant’
Tom Hardy has a longtime affiliation with hip-hop, so it’s no wonder he’s tried to sneak a lyric or two into his movies over the years, including one special nod to Bobby Shmurda.
Prior to his successful acting career, which has famously seen him take on the roles of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, the Kray twins in Legend and Venom in the Marvel film series, the British icon spent his spare time rapping. It all began when he was a teenager, and he even had a record deal at one point.
“I started out rapping when I was 14 or 15,” he told the BBC. “Because I come from a nice middle-class neighbourhood, it was a very hard sell. And I wasn’t very good! I used to be with the guy who managed Leela James and Lauryn Hill, Pras, the Fugees and all that. I worked out with (Grammy-winning producers) Warren Riker and Gordon Williams. I’ve recorded loads of stuff, but it’s never been released.”
He added, “I’ve got albums, man. My best friend Peanut, he grew up in the South Bronx. He’s a very good MC and we still play. It’ll come out in a film one day, it’ll come out in a character somewhere.”
Together with his friend Edward Tracy, Hardy formed a group called Tommy No 1 + Eddie Too Tall and recorded a mixtape titled Falling on Your Arse in 1999. The project remained unreleased until 2018, when it eventually surfaced online, almost two decades later.
One of the many highlights in Tom Hardy’s acting career came in 2015 when he starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant. During an interview with Scott Carty on the press run, Hardy revealed he made a reference to Bobby Shmurda‘s hit single ‘Hot N*gga’ whilst filming a scene. “I said, ‘Shut your trap house’, which never made the cut,” Hardy said, which was a nod to the drill rapper’s “Get up out my trap house” line.
Throughout the years, Tom Hardy has been vocal about the inspiration Hip Hop artists have had on his characters, notably showing love to rappers from the ’90s for his Venom voice.
“So I mix a little bit of Busta Rhymes, a little bit of Method [Man] and Redman, a little bit of James Brown, and ever so slightly an element of Richard Burton,” he explained to BBC Radio 1. As he continues to play diverse roles, these voices sometimes get mixed up with one another, most notably finding similarities between Venom and Bane.
“I think that’s an occupational hazard,” he said. “You know, there are only a few characters that we have and we will smear between them all. As Alfie [from Peaky Blinders] comes out, it’s inevitable.”
It’s rumoured that Tom Hardy has quietly resurrected his rap career in recent years under the alias of Frankie Pulitzer, who’s made a number of appearances across projects from Czarface — the group made up of Wu-Tang Clan‘s Inspectah Deck and 7L & Esoteric. These include verses on ‘Today’s Special’ and ‘Klyntar Czar’ in 2017 and ‘Frenzy in a Far Off World’ last year.