Tech N9ne is the same age as the Rock, and when the Rock was making his name in wrestling, Tech N9ne was tearing up clubs and establishing himself as a regional figurehead with his own cult of Juggalo-adjacent fans.

Tech N9ne is a fascinating figure, an independent success story who has spent decades carving out his own hugely lucrative Midwestern speed-rap empire and while only glancingly interacting with the rap mainstream. So when 49-year-old Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson showed up on a Tech N9ne track last week, rapping his first actual rap verse ever, I was not ready. Vince McMahon probably thought this shit was hilarious. it’s also, for some reason, virulently offensive to Asian people, and it includes “hermaphrodite” as an insult. I guess the Rock also had a song with Slick Rick on a 2001 CD of WWF entrance themes, but that song, “Pie,” isn’t really anything that I could call a rap song.

It was insane muscled-up blowhard swagger - sports swagger, more or less. He had swagger, but it was not rapper swagger. In retrospect, I should’ve known this would go badly.

The Rock didn’t lose any of his momentum by showing up on “It Doesn’t Matter,” but the dream of the Rock’s rap career was simply not to be. (“ It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a fresh Bentley!”) This also happened to be the exact moment when Wyclef Jean fell the fuck off - the moment when he thought it would be a good idea to put Kenny Rogers and Pharoahe Monch on the same track or to use The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II A Book as an album title. The Rock, it turned out, was not going to rap he was just going to yell some of his catchphrases, which seemed even more absurd in a non-wrestling context.

Tech n9ne songs with ah woo