From his 2005-released full length, You Can’t See Me, WWE legend turned Hollywood star, John Cena has “70 lost tracks.”
Retiring from professional wrestling this weekend following his very last match, the 48-year old multi-hyphenate released his first and only album two decades years ago, and recently revealed that there was plenty of material left on the cutting room floor.
In an interview with Tom Rinaldi for WWE’s YouTube channel, Cena said “There’s like 70 lost tracks of the album that never made it out.” “I was able to shave off the ones that shouldn’t make and give you the ones that should, and I’m lucky to get that.”
Featuring 16 songs – including his iconic theme song ‘The Time Is Now,’ – John’s debut collection sold over 43,000+ copies in its first week and peaked at #15 on the Billboard 200 album chart.
Joking that he’s the “only platinum artist to never have a follow up”, he added “It is a young man’s game and I’m not in it anymore.”
Explaining that he stumbled on rapping as “an accident” early in his WWE career, the Massachusetts-native said “The rapping thing was an accident. I listened to the music they played for me and I’m like, ‘I can do better than this — wait I could do better than this.’ ” which led to him record his original Basic Thuganomics theme song for $10,000.00
In an interesting and unpredictable twist it was Hip-hop that saved his WWE career, that was floundering in the mid-2000s when he expected to be let go. It was during a European tour, that Cena joined in with other wrestlers free-styling, which sparked a new character that ultimately changed his life.
It was John’s longtime friend and rapper Esoteric who played a major role in the transformation as he told ESPN “His intentions were pure, and when he had the chance to merge the two [rap and wrestling], he jumped at it.” “John’s a purist when it comes to hip-hop; he’s fluent in Gang Starr, Hieroglyphics, Black Moon, EPMD, Wu [Tang Clan], all the good stuff.”
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Author: Al Dente
Photo: Gage Skidmore