The Doctor of Thuganomics has shared his Mount Rushmore of rappers.
Wrestler-turned-actor-turned-naked Oscars presenter John Cena was asked to name “the greatest four rappers” ever on Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay podcast. “So, for me, Jay-Z, Eminem, Nas, and Rakim,” the Peacemaker star said without hesitation. Cena continued, “Everyone has their bias. I know that list is obviously going to incite riots. We all have our bias. We all have our favorites. That’s what makes music special. That’s what makes creativity. I was brought up in the East Coast boom bap. I love wordplay, I love poetry, that’s what I based my character on. So I think all that’s super clever.”
Of Cena’s selections, two (Eminem and Jay-Z) appeared on Family Feud‘s chaos-inducing “Greatest Rapper of All Time” board.
Cena also shared that he started rapping due to the WWE’s “stock rap music” at the time. “WWE was a rock and roll company,” he said. “They didn’t have any depth of field for hip-hop, and I listened to my own music being like, ‘I could do better than this.’” The doctor will check out from wrestling in 2025.
You can watch the podcast above (the rap talk begins at the 29-minute mark).