It might be hard to believe but at one point and time Tom Hardy was doing his best to become a rapper. His mixtape from 1999 just surfaced not long ago and has been the buzz around Hollywood. Unfortunately it was taken down nearly as quickly as it was put up. The mixtape was made back in 1999 when Hard was in his early 20’s and according to some people is pretty good. After listening it’s not the worst thing in the world but I can see why Hardy would actually state that he didn’t believe he was that great. It had potential, but it might have still had a long way to go. If he’d stuck with it he might have made a career in music, but obviously his decision took him down a different path.
He even went so far as to ask his agent whether he should get into music and his agent said no, he should go into acting. That decision has taken him down a rather uncertain road at times but so far it seems to have treated him very well. He has a movie upcoming, a career to fall back on and several films that have earned him high praise. It’s hard to say what he would have done in the music industry at this point but I would guess that it wouldn’t have been nearly as much as he’s done in acting. Putting aside some of the more disastrous roles he’s taken such as the villain in Star Trek: Nemesis, The Drop, and a few other movies that he might have been better off staying away from, he’s been a solid actor for quite a while. His portrayal of Charlie Bronson, Britain’s most famous prisoner, wasn’t spot on but it was enough to earn him critical acclaim. Anyone remember how crazy that movie was?
Roles in movies such as Warrior, The Dark Knight Rises, and Mad Max: Fury Road, didn’t do him a whole lot of favors but it did gain him needed exposure and it did continue to cement the fact that even in a movie that’s not all that great he’s still an acting powerhouse that’s not to be so easily dismissed. In the rap game it seems like he might have been way too easily eclipsed by a number of artists that were either well-established or were just coming onto the scene. White rappers were of course more accepted at that time but the fact that he came from a middle-class lifestyle doesn’t feel like it would have helped him all that much, since many rappers that climb the ranks seem to come from almost nothing to where they are now. It might seem like a stereotype but if you listen to a lot of rap you can get the feeling that those individuals that choose the genre have known some form of hardship in their lives that has hardened them and given them the inspiration to write lyrics that tell their story.
I really think that Tom Hardy made the best choice when he decided to stick to acting.
