After years of sharing his talent on the big screen as Tom Hardy, Frankie Pulitzer has officially arrived to drop some bangers.
On Friday, the Oscar nominee’s rap persona released his 15-track debut album Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer, made in collaboration with his hip-hop collective Czarface, and featuring appearances from Busta Rhymes, Method Man and EL-O, as well as nods to Shakespeare, Marvel and Stephen King.
On the track “Grim-Visaged War“, Hardy recites the “winter of our discontent” monologue from Richard III in his Bane voice from Dark Knight Rises (2012).
In “Raw Forever“, his collab with Busta Rhymes, Hardy rapped, “I’m bringing out the dead like a paramedic out the cage, directed by Marty / Frank Pierce, the gang’s here, welcome to the party,” referring to Nicolas Cage’s character in Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead (1999). He continues, “I be somewhat of a scientist like Willem Defoe / if you know, then you know, goblin up crumbs,” nodding to Defoe’s Green Goblin from Spider-Man (2002). With another Marvel reference, he adds, “Doctor Doom how I’m the Victor the scripture.”
In “Mad Technology“, which features Method Man, Hardy makes several Stephen King references, including a NSFW mention of Kathy Bates in Misery (1990). “You shit-for-brain no name lame, that bites like Cujo / I’d rather masturbate to Kathy Bates than hear you flow / And you know, that misery it, loves company.”
After Czarface began collaborating with a mysterious new rapper in 2021 named Frankie Pulitzer, there was speculation that Hardy was the artist’s secret identity.
