Tom Hardy raps as Frankie Pulitzer on a new album with the group Czarface

Tom Hardy has released a rap album. Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer is out on streaming services, credited to the actor's musical alias Frankie Pulitzer and made with the hip-hop group Czarface, which is the duo 7L & Esoteric plus Wu-Tang Clan's Inspectah Deck.

The record has been years in the making. Czarface began working with Hardy around 2021, and speculation grew when Busta Rhymes visited the set of Venom: The Last Dance in 2024, a sighting fans read as a hint about the guest list. It turned out to be one. The finished album runs 15 songs with appearances from Busta Rhymes, Method Man, EL-P and Kendra Morris.

The writing leans hard on film. Hardy's verses reach for Marvel, Martin Scorsese, Stephen King and Titanic, and the references land as often on his own career as on anything else.

The clearest example is "Grim-Visaged War," where Hardy performs a Richard III monologue in the voice of Bane, the villain he played in The Dark Knight Rises in 2012. On "Mad Technology" he works through Stephen King imagery, including the dog from Cujo, in lines aimed squarely at other actors.

Hardy told BBC Radio 1 that the voice he was reaching for was a blend: traces of Busta Rhymes, some Method Man and Redman, a bit of James Brown and, lightly, Richard Burton.

MusicSuey covered the record when it was first dated, in Czarface and Frankie Pulitzer have an album due later in August, and Inspectah Deck has kept his own schedule busy with the 19-track Dragon's Breath. More hip-hop coverage is on the genre hub.