The real reason John Cena started rapping as part of WWE role
John Cena is one of the most well-known wrestlers of the 2000s. During his time as a WWE fighter, he won many belts. However, some strange events happened along the way, including Cena’s love for hip-hop.
During an appearance on the Club Shay Shay podcast with former NFL star Shanon Shar[pe, Cena spoke about his love for hip-hop and why he started rapping as part of his act before and after WWE fights.
Cena began by telling Sharpe why, as a child in a small Massachusetts town, he strangely gravitated towards the culture. The former wrestler detailed his childhood and his personality type, explaining to the host, “I was one of five boys, and I had a lot of angst with how the household was being run. I was a rebel. That music found me at the right time.”
He continued to explain how hip-hop songs that weren’t about his area or his daily life still managed to translate. Using the example of a West Coast classic, Cena told Sharpe, “So even though a song like ‘Fuck tha Police’ might have been an anthem for the state of the social well-being in South Central Los Angeles—to a 13-year-old kid, the police were my parents, and it was me who was like, ‘Well, fuck that!'”
Although during their conversation, Cena cited an early love for N.W.A. the performer unveiled that later on, in his late teens, he gravitated more towards the music being released closer to home on the East Coast, with acts such as Rakim, Nas, the Beastie Boys, the Fat Boys and Kool Moe Dee, being some of his favourites.
During the lengthy discussion, Cena admitted that when he first joined the WWE roster in 2002, most of the music played in the arenas and by the acts was energetic rock. He admitted that initially, he knew the crowd and the company weren’t ready for hip-hop. Opening up about this, he explained, “At the time, WWE was a rock and roll company. They didn’t have any depth of field for hip-hop, and I listened to my own music being like, ‘I could do better than this!'”
The wrestler didn’t like the initial style he was forced to adopt, so he decided to release a full-length album to set the tone he wanted moving forward. Explaining the project’s creation, Cena added, “I called up a friend who knew a friend who had a studio. We got some beats, and we made an album. And that was it, that was it.”
In 2005, Cena released his debut album, You Can’t See Me. The 17-track LP peaked at number 15 on the Billboard 200 chart and caused some discomfort in the culture with many comparing him to Eminem. However, it never resulted in a real feud.