Tom Hardy Just Dropped a Rap Album Packed With Green Goblin and Doctor Doom References, and Fans Can’t Believe It

Actors branching out into music tends to generate a fairly predictable range of reactions, from genuine curiosity to outright skepticism about whether the crossover was really necessary. Every so often, though, one of these passion projects arrives with enough personality and pop-culture obsession that it becomes something worth talking about entirely on its own terms.

That’s exactly the kind of reaction currently unfolding online, as one of Hollywood’s most reliably intense leading men revealed a side of himself few casual fans knew existed.

Tom Hardy raps about Green Goblin and Doctor Doom in the song “Raw Forever” from his new album, dropping the line, “I be somewhat of a scientist like Willem Dafoe. If you know, then you know. Goblin up crumbs,” before later declaring, “Doctor Doom, how I’m the Victor, the Scripture.” The lyrics appear on “Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer,” a collaborative album released August 28 that pairs Hardy’s rap alter ego with underground hip-hop group Czarface.

According to Variety, the album marks Hardy’s latest outing under the stage name Frankie Pulitzer, a persona the actor has quietly maintained alongside his film career for several years. Czarface itself consists of Wu-Tang Clan’s Inspectah Deck alongside duo 7L & Esoteric, a group with a well-established history of building entire projects around comic book mythology, having previously released collaborative albums with the late MF DOOM and Ghostface Killah.

Hardy’s connection to Czarface isn’t a new development. According to Stereogum, the actor first appeared as Frankie Pulitzer on the group’s 2021 EP “Good Guys, Bad Guys,” with one of those earlier collaborations even landing on the official soundtrack for “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.” That history gives this new full-length album a sense of continuity rather than feeling like a one-off celebrity novelty project.

The 15-track record features an impressively stacked guest list beyond Busta Rhymes’ appearance on “Raw Forever,” including additional contributions from Method Man, El-P, and Kendra Morris scattered across the tracklist. ComicBasics reported that Hardy’s comic book references extend well beyond just the “Raw Forever” track, with the AV Club noting that the song also includes nods to Batman, DC Comics hero Sergeant Rock, and Marvel villain Knull, whose name inspired the track title “Knull & Void” elsewhere on the album.

Given Hardy’s own history playing Bane in “The Dark Knight Rises” and Venom across multiple Sony films, the dense web of supervillain references throughout the record feels less like random name-dropping and more like a genuine extension of his on-screen comic book resume. ComicBasics also noted that the album’s release lands amid separate headlines regarding Hardy’s status on Paramount+’s “MobLand,” though a production insider reportedly clarified to Variety that he hasn’t been fired from the series and that the door remains open for a potential third season.

For an actor best known for playing tortured, brooding characters across some of the past decade’s most acclaimed dramas and blockbusters, watching him rap about Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin performance offers a genuinely unexpected glimpse into a completely different creative outlet. Whether “Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer” becomes a lasting side project or simply a fun one-off experiment, it’s already given fans plenty to talk about.

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