The strange story behind Tom Hardy’s 1999 rap album: “Lo and behold, here it is”
For a long time, it seemed like Tom Hardy could do no wrong. He was the dog-loving, CBBC bedtime story-reading movie hunk with a Marvel franchise of his own and a set of Christopher Nolan films to go with it.
But then over the last year or so, things have seemed to have gone a little bit awry in the world of the hunk from Hammersmith, and he may have to do a bit of work to get back into everyone’s good books. Most recently, there have been the issues on the set of MobLand, with reports of the actor refusing to come out of his trailer and turning up late for filming, leading to him being let go from Guy Ritchie’s production.
That put a bit of a microscope on Hardy’s career, and whether he’d actually always been the good guy that his public-facing persona might suggest. Charlize Theron, for one, definitely wasn’t a fan after they’d worked on 2014’s Mad Max: Fury Road together, during which she reportedly demanded a female producer be with her at all times on set and called him the c-word, and not in an endearing way.
X-Men and Star Trek star Patrick Stewart was another who had tales of not being overly impressed with Hardy either, and Shia LaBeouf thought he was basically completely unhinged, which is saying something. None of it has stopped Hardy from booking movie after movie for 20 years, of course, so as with most things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But if he did have to knock being an international movie star on the head, perhaps he could revert to his other career: being a rapper.
Because way back at the tail end of the 1990s, around the time he was winning a modelling contest on TV’s The Big Breakfast, that was Hardy’s passion project. Naming himself Tommy No 1 and partnering with a producer called Eddie Too Tall (real name Ed Tracy), he recorded plenty of sample-heavy material, including an album, some of which saw the light of day a few years ago when it was posted to Bandcamp.
Speaking at the time to music site Complex about the 18-track collection called Falling On Your Arse, Tracy said, “Tom asked me whether I still had the album kicking about in the loft. Lo and behold, here it is in all its rawness, just as it sounded then. He’ll be pleased with the reception it’s had today. We always said we’d do a Vegas tour as a joke. Maybe if this album generates enough love, then we can coax Tom onstage.”
The pair were friends as teenagers and made the music using simply a handheld dictaphone and snippets of movies from VHS tapes, which Tracy would then stitch together using an Atari ST computer, an Akai sampler and two record decks. According to Tracy, Hardy showed some considerable talent, adding, “Tom had a click track for timing, but that was it; he had to get it in one take. Raw production techniques!”
Indeed, Hardy’s career could have gone in a very different direction, because Tracy revealed that the pair were actually offered a record deal off the back of the demos, but the actor’s agent stepped in to advise him to do movies rather than music, a decision that paid off in spades, as Tracy acknowledged: “Terrible advice! Look where he is now?!”
Things have come full circle, however, because Hardy, who also operates musically under the ‘Frankie Pulitzer’ moniker, is teaming up with hip-hop legends Czarface to release an album with the very straightforward title of Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer, which will drop in September and also features the likes of Wu-Tang’s Method Man and Busta Rhymes.
