Tom Hardy, the actor known for playing rough-and-tumble characters on screen, has brought that same intensity to a microphone. Recording under the alias Frankie Pulitzer, Hardy has released a collaborative album titled "Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer" with the underground rap supergroup Czarface, which is made up of duo 7L & Esoteric and Wu-Tang Clan's Inspectah Deck.
Hardy laces his verses throughout the album with references pulled from his own film and comic book résumé, as well as broader pop culture. He played the villain Bane in 2012's "The Dark Knight Rises" and has portrayed the Spider-Man antihero Venom across three standalone films plus a cameo in "Spider-Man: No Way Home."
On the track "Raw Forever," Hardy references Martin Scorsese's 1999 film "Bringing Out the Dead," Willem Dafoe's turn as the Green Goblin in 2002's "Spider-Man," the Marvel villain Doctor Doom, DC Comics hero Sergeant Rock, and Sidney Lumet's 1975 classic "Dog Day Afternoon."
In "Mad Technology," he name-drops two Stephen King novels-turned-films, "Cujo" and "Misery," along with a striking comment about Kathy Bates, who starred in the film adaptation of the latter. That same verse shouts out the Marvel hero Thor and actor Shameik Moore, who voices Miles Morales in the "Spider-Verse" films and starred in the drama "Dope."
At the close of "Grim-Visaged War," Hardy recites Shakespeare's famous "Richard III" monologue in a voice reminiscent of his Bane performance. Elsewhere, the track "Gnawing at My Rhyme Like a Poisonous Rat" includes a reference to "Titanic."
Hardy has not spoken publicly about his work as Frankie Pulitzer, though this isn't his first foray into rap. He has previously appeared on other Czarface albums and released a handful of loose collaborative singles. Around the turn of the millennium, he also recorded an album called "Falling on Your Arse in 1999" under the moniker Tommy No 1, working with producer friend Edward Tracy, known as Eddie Too Tall. That record was never officially released but surfaced online in 2018.
Photo: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
