Hip-Hop and Pro Wrestling: The Other Side of the Story

Everybody's going on about how hip-hop has turned into pro wrestling, but have y'all noticed how pro wrestling has turned into hip-hop? For years now WWE all-star John Cena has been kicking freestyles in the ring every week, mostly ghostwritten by his Boston brethren Esoteric, as I understand it.

Check this in-depth interview with John Cena, on his daily struggle to keep it real as a hip-hop wrestler:

John Cena: From the Ring to the Microphone, He's All Real!

...So what do you say to people who are overly critical about hip-hop’s advancement into markets and outlets where it wasn’t originally accepted or available?

Cena – That’s where this comes from … [Points to his baseball cap.] It says ‘F**k Rules.’ There are two sides to that coin. There are mainstream people who are not ready to accept hip-hop, and then there are the hip-hop people claiming sell-out! Either way, their thought process is wrong. The hip-hop people claiming sell-out … I can understand when it’s just someone trying to make a buck off the music. I’ve got an album that’s gonna drop on May 10th that’s been in the works for three years. I put forth my own money; I signed all my rights over to WWE. I’m not making a penny off of this. I’m doing this because I love hip-hop. For someone to scream sell-out is the wrong way to go. They need to be proud that, f**k man, hip-hop has finally got to wrestling. So if I’m a hip-hop head and I’m watching wrestling … but I can’t tell my boys about it because it’s a rock’n roll sport, now you can get out of the closet. You can f**king say, yo, we’re repping hiphop on WWE. My boy Cena is kicking ass for all of us. Hopefully, it’ll open the door for more people. My boy [Rey] Mysterio is rocking the Gucci baggy pants … it’s getting there...

...for certain people to say hip-hop is growing too fast or selling out, those people should be happy that their monster has grown into this u n s t o p p a b l e Frankenstein. That is the utmost form of flattery to those true, true hiphop heads that bleed underground hip-hop and hate on c o m m e r c i a l . They need to embrace the fact that hiphop, their art form, the art form that they love so much that they’ve gotta hate it on the other side, has gone everywhere. True fans of the music will be able to tell – ‘okay, that mutha f**ka is trying to make a quick buck, he’s real, he’s not, he’s just going off somebody else.’ So there is a little decision making process to determine who is repping hip-hop and who is ripping off the culture...

How does all that make you feel?

Cena – I love the fact that it’s spreading, man. The fact that a kid from West Newberry, like me, can go out and breathe hip-hop life into a culture that doesn’t have any is fantastic. And I can still go in the hood and get rep! I walk in Jamaica Queens where I buy my jewelry and cats is like, yo that’s Cena, man! That’s the kid! That’s hip-hop, man. It’s not about your color; it’s about the culture. And that’s a wonderful thing...