There are a lot of Best Kept Secrets in hip-hop, but one of the most interesting is the career of Frankie Pulitzer. If you’ve listened to Czarface — the comic-themed and straight based collaboration between Wu-Tang legend Inspectah Deck and Boston’s own 7L & Esoteric — you might have noticed him dropping dimes on their last few albums through features on tracks like “The Czarlaac Pit” and “Frenzy in a Far Off World.” The guy’s got a less-stoned Action Bronson vibe with a great flow and clever rhymes, and it turns out the man behind the moniker has had a little bit more screen time than you might expect (and none of it involved watching Ancient Aliens for Vice): That, dudes, is Tom Hardy.
Yes, Mad Max himself is holding court with the legendary masters of the Wu-Tang sword style — no Mr. Fantastick puzzles to solve here. He’s holding his own with the likes of DMC, Logic, and Kool Keith on the albums, and given that there’s a big ol’ comic book movie that he’s starring in that’s number one at the box office, it makes a little sense that he’d team back up with Czarface. This time, Venom is front and center on “Knull and Void,” in which Method Man joins up with Pulitzer and Czarface to rhyme over a Twilight Zone beat — perfect shit for you to get anknullillated over while waiting for the election results.
We’ll flat out say that this is much better than The Last Dance (and it’s still in theaters if you want to check it out anyway), and we hope that Hardy gears up for a full album someday. Get ready for EGOT status, dude: it’s probably in your future.
Listen to it below or on your preferred streaming platform, and lose yourself in that dope-ass cover art: