Tom Hardy drops some mad multiversal science in new rap track "Raw Forever"

Rap supergroup Czarface (7L & Esoteric and Wu-Tang Clan’s Inspectah Deck) have released a new album, Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer, and they’ve brought along a few friends. A new track from this album, “Raw Forever,” is making the rounds on the internet today, and rightly so—it’s not bad, a thumping four-part flow with each guest star, Busta Rhymes, Method Man, and EL-O, setting the stage for their extra-special guest, Frankie Pulitzer, also known to some as the vocally eclectic Venom and The Dark Knight Rises actor Tom Hardy. You can watch the new video below.

Certainly, there’s something to admire about how especially nerdy this collaboration is, featuring Messrs. Rhymes, Man, and Pulitzer charting a pop culture road map with scads of references both popular and, uh, not so much (it’s not every day you find your head nodding to a reference to Scott Cooper’s 2015 crime movie Black Mass). With lines like “With the raps we go to bat like Jim Gordon,” we can almost hear the former Bane actor getting amped up before he even takes the mic. 

Among the many references in this righteous dork love-in: a passing nod to Martin Scorsese before Hardy evokes the name of Frank Pierce, Nic Cage’s character in the 1999 film Bringing Out The Dead; noting that he’s “something of a scientist” like Willem Dafoe (followed by the declaration that he is, in fact, “Goblin up crumbs”); a fleeting nod to Dog Day Afternoon is followed by a very-awesome nod to the DC Comics war hero Sgt. Rock; the bar “rip you out your costume” is accompanied by a Batman Halloween mask in the video; a very timely line that should only make you wince a little goes, “Doctor Doom, how I’m the ‘victor’ of the scripture.” If that’s not enough, you can listen to another track, “Knull & Void,” a reference to the villain behind Venom: The Last Dance and Marvel Comics’ King In Black saga.