It’s no secret that Tom Hardy spent a not-insignificant amount of time rapping as a teenager. It is also no secret that his rap career didn’t pan out, as Hardy has instead chosen to spend his time playing handsome men whose faces are often obscured. Now, we can finally hear a loose collection of his tracks with the compilation Falling on Your Arse in 1999. Capably produced by writer-director Edward Tracy (who seems to have spent a lot of time with the Wu-Tang Clan back catalogue), Hardy’s attempt at rapping is … pretty good, actually.
How much you enjoy these tracks will depend on your tolerance for lo-fi recordings of endearingly sloppy verses made by British celebrities who rap like they grew up in New York. Hardy changes his voice up a lot, experiments with flow, and generally raps like he is going to run out of breath at any second (a popular style in the ’90s). When it comes to unexpected rap talents, he ranks somewhere between Degrassi’s Aubrey Graham and Shaq.