WWE super star John Cene recently appeared on the Billboard's Balling Out podcast and throughout the podcast, he spoke on a variety of topics starting from what he learned from WWE Chairman Vince McMahon to his love of hip hop among other things. However, the most interesting bit was on the effect of hip hop on his career.
On the subject of his love of hip hop and the early influences, he said, "Beastie Boys' 'License To Ill' [and] Fat Boys' 'Crushin'' were the first two CDs I got, hip hop CDs I got in 1985, 1986.I'll play 'Illmatic' till the tape breaks, the Wu Tang stuff. I love Jay-Z. I just think you listen to his evolution as a human being through his art. The original stuff he was doing till 'Hard Knock Life' till like '30 Something'. Obviously, that song resonates with me a little bit. Kanye West makes great music. Drake is, I think, phenomenal. I think I'm always drawn to like boombapish style hip hop. Like, I can go back to Grand Puba and all those guys."
He also said how his hip hop persona came about in his early year in the WWE, "The people who make decisions on creativity in the WWE overheard me in the back of a tour bus. To pass the time on some of the long rides, when we travel internationally, we travel as a group because they don't want people spread out all over the country, so we all take these buses. And to pass the time, some guys play cards. Nowadays it's a lot different. You have entertainment in the palm of your hand. That wasn't the case at the turn of the century, so we would often, like, freestyle rap on each other and I always kind of did okay, okay enough for them to be like, 'hey, would you want to do that on television?'. And at the time, I was very undefinable. I looked like every other wrestler in boots and tights. There was no real gravity towards my character and I realized that it wasn't being done on television because WWE was a very rock focused company and I realized I could run as far as I wanted to, so I was like, 'yes, absolutely. I would like to do this'."
