Sports

These '90s pro wrestlers recorded a song called "Rap Is Crap (I Hate Rap)"

by Tyler Munro

Professional wrestling was weird as hell in the late ’90s, and the competition between the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling only made things odder.

For the WWF, there’s perhaps no feud more curious than the borderline “race war” the Federation started in its Attitude-era between the Black Panther-inspired Nation of Domination and, uh, everyone else. The conflicts were downright confusing, painting eventual wrestling demigod Rocky Maivia as a bad guy and causing fringe-racists to chant “U-S-A!” every time Farooq hogged the camera.

The WCW had its response, but in Mockbuster fashion it had less to do with confounding politics than rap, which the Curt Hennig led West Texas Rednecks insisted on reminding everyone was a bunch of crap.

Naturally, they made a music video.

With the late Curt “Mr. Perfect” Hennig as their leader, the West Texas Rednecks’ ignited a lighthearted if not misguided and hilarious feud with rap complete with its own original soundtrack.

Before long, “Rap is Crap (I Hate Rap)” was released. Written as a takedown of Master P’s No Limit Soldiers, who were for some reason crossing into the ring back in 1999, the song took off among wrestling badmen.

While clearly terrible, the song was an interesting reflection of the kind of missteps that led to WCW’s slow — then steady — decline.

The song was the lynchpin of a bizarre crossover attempt between wrestling and rap that confused fans almost immediately. Sparked when Master P mocked a cowboy had the Rednecks were trying to give Silkk the Shocker, wrestling fans were left wondering who to root for. And when Master P et al began to be the bad guys, the gimmick was killed off almost as quickly, and oddly, as it began, making room for the Insane Clown Posse to confusingly fill the hip-hop wrestling throne with the crew of aggro-clowns.

Luckily, thanks to the internet, “Rap is Crap (I Hate Rap)” will live on forever.

And yes, there is a studio version. Thank you for asking:

Before his death, Curt Hennig revealed that he didn’t actually hate rap music, he just “thought that someone ought to go against it.” How’s that for kayfabe?