HNHH breaks down 15 of the best superhero references in hip-hop - not the "Top 15", simply 15 of the best.
The inspiration rappers have drawn from comic book characters over the years is undeniable, whether it be superheroes, villains or relatively normal protagonists who happen to find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Some have even created comic books based on fictionalized versions of themselves, most notably the Wu-Tang Clan as a whole as well as individual members Method Man, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, RZA and GZA.Â
From other pioneers such as Eminem, Snoop Dogg and MF DOOM to more contemporary acts such as XV, Hodgy Beats and Nacho Picasso, emcees have looked to comic books for inspiration since the early days.Â
Read on for a breakdown of some of the best references to superheroes and villains over the past three decades, both lyrical, visual and character based. Keep in mind, they appear in no particular order, and forgive us for the hundreds of notable heroes and anti-heroes we've omitted.
DEADPOOL: Ras Kass - iSpit
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
[Excerpt]
Serious shit, really I spit
Go 'head, ask her any question, my nig - Siri my bitch
I hit harder than the Man With The Iron Fist
RZA's my ventriloquist, ya'll niggas is Eddie Murphy delirious
Funny in your red leather, I'm Dexter, I'm Deadpool
12 years ago some dirty fool asked me to go to med school
Dr. Moreau's thesis, I'm dope at what I wrote
So consider me your savior, I'm the lyrics' last hope
IRONMAN: Ghostface Killah, AKA Tony Starks - Slept On Tony
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
[Excerpt]
When they kidnapped your boy and forced me to do evil
I created an iron suit to protect my people
Escaped, bound to be Ironman the great
The billionaire Tony Starks'll renew your fate
Built Stark Towers, throw the biggest events
Got Liquid Armour, I can paint off dents
Keep a few bad chicks, I ain't your average hero
Movie premieres, catch me with Gisele and De Niro
BATMAN & ROBIN: Snoop Dogg - Batman & Robin
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
Feat. Lady Of Rage & RBX
[Excerpt: RBX]
Batman! War is on the brink It seems that the Penguin is causin' a stink Call up Robin quick, you know what to do Add dye to the water and splash the town blue
Shit I'm there in a flash, Batmobile on 3s Trust me, buddy, I've got heat for Mr. Freeze And Clayface will catch the embrace... Of napalm when I drop my Bat Bomb ...and don't you forget it Takin' out you suckers and you don't know how I did it
[Excerpt: Lady Of Rage]
Yeah, when it's beef in Gotham City I, gots to flip And hit 'em with the "POW!" "BAM!" "BIFF!" "WHOA!" Pick up your lips, don't trip, tie your shoelace When I spit, I split it, turn Harvey Dent into Two-Face
DOCTOR DOOM: DOOM (AKA MF DOOM)
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SPIDERMAN: Wu-Tang Clan - Protect Ya Neck
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
[Excerpt: Inspectah Deck]
I smoke on the mic like smokin' Joe Frazier
The Hellraiser, raisin' Hell with the flavor
Terrorize the jam like troops in Pakistan
Swingin' through your town like your neighborhood Spiderman
So "UH!" - tick-tock, keep tickin'
While I get you flippin' off the shit that I'm kickin'
WOLVERINE: Lupe Fiasco - Lupe Back
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
[Excerpt]
Yield to the forces of darknes
I bring you the torches of our shit
Reinforced with hardness of Wolverine's arm
With the harshness and overall sharpness
Now how far do the arms get?
My nigga, from the stars to the starfish
From the baby to the Bar Mitz
It's a whole lot of light and a whole lot of arm length
Redheads Mary Jane, I'm Spider-Man Johnny Blaze the Human Torch the fire man Breaking hearts Tony Stark the Iron Man Living large I do it big the Giant Man I read a lot of comics in my school days Big Chain Luke Cage berserker rage Your girl on my Cyclops like Jean Grey Her Ex-man no X-man I'm Team A And I got two kinds of Hulk That's green and gray And I'm known to hold the hammer like Beta-Ray Switch chicks like Mystique threw Rogue in a porn My African chick kinda look like Storm And my Chevy like Colossus, it's chrome and it's foreign I'm fly like Archangel Worthington Warren My Venom causes Carnage You have been warned Niggas call me Rhino cause I toot my own horn
[Hook]
Rotten looks, common crooks Smoking, reading comic books Smoking, reading comic books Smoking, reading comic books Rotten looks, common crooks Smoking, reading comic books Smoking, reading comic books Smoking, reading comic books Rotten looks, common crooks Smoking, reading comic books Smoking, reading comic books Smoking, reading comic books I'm a modern marvel My whole kitchen marble I might have lost my marbles But I've still got my Marvel
[Verse 2]
In the casino pulling cards like Gambit Bandito Magneto chick magnet Hey Thor I make 'em pay more Call me Silver Surfer when I'm on my skateboard Took her to Atlantis Got her wet like Namor I'm the fantastic one these niggas came for Reed Richards with the caine man I make it gain more Feeling like Forge cause I came from X-force Call me Kingpin cause the way I extort Daredevil Deadpool who's next up Your girl Professor X she good from the neck up I call her Dr. Strange just to get a check up Psylok and Electra still going head up Treat Dr. Doom like Dr. Phil, I'm fed up Omega Red in my all red get-up My type baller Nightcrawler quite sped-up
[Hook]
SECRET WARS: The Last Emperor - Secret Wars Part I
SHARE PICTURE
SHARE PICTURE
[Verse 1]
What if I had the, power to gather, all of my favorite emcees With the illest comic book characters, and they became arch enemies? Inconceivable? Unbelievable? Yet as wild as it seems The Emperor and Stan Lee would coach the two opposing teams Keep it clean, no bats, no gats, guns, no interference Comic book characters would go head up with raw lyrics Now I take, whoever might be on break from doing tours And have them signed up for the Last Emperor's Secret Wars Sure, for that kind of capacity, you need a crazy large arena That might stretch from west Philadelphia to east Medina If I'm able, I'd put it on pay-per-view through my label And give free tickets to my neighborhood bums with no cable Yeah, that sounds phat, now that we've squared away the propositions Let's begin with the ultimate toughman competition "Let the games begin!" Set it off, it's the fight of the century KRS and Professor X would battle each other mentally With rhymes, these two team captains waste no time Charles Xavier tried to invade Kris Parker's mind He shot a cerebral probe at Kris's mind, but he missed it Professor X taken out by the Blastmaster's metaphysics Round two, new fight, word to life, you gotta see this Locked in mortal combat is Dr. Strange andThe Genius Here son, he's no match, let that grafted wizard have it 'My Liquid Sword slashes straight through Dr. Strange's Magic' Another hero down, and now the score is two to zero Gy words from the Genius, and he's still my rhyming hero Now the next fight was conducted in a rough like manner Specifically between Reggie Noble and Dr. David Banner Or should I say the Incredible Hulk when he's amped off the gamma? But Reggie Noble soon became the Incredilbe Redman and slammed him You know how Redman gets when his adrenaline starts pumping Started schitzin in the ring, so then the Thing tired jump in Ben Grimm leaps into the ring, and after Redman he lunges 'But Reggie Noble dropped him with two Brick City punches!' Rhymes by the bunches, bums get dirtier than Middle Eastern dungeons Ready to set this like Detective Columbo and his hunches While the ref's clean out the ring, cause the last fight was so intense Let's do a live interview with the brother named Common Sense 'Yeah, yeah it's Common Sense, and Iceman tried to freeze me So I took him to Chicago and told him to take it easy He couldn't see me with my applejack hat and hightops Colossus and Cyclops, I got No I.D. and Y Not' Good lookin Common Sense, that last album was tight Let me get back to the ring and evaluate the next fight Now the next fight had to be the craziest of all times We got Dr. Octapus 'versus the mighty Busta Rhymes!' Doc Oct versus Busta? Man that stuff is dead He'll get his eight arms ripped off, going up against the dreads 'Ha, ha! Now Dr. Octapus, who you think you grabbing? The god can never lose, so you know it will never happen Lyrically making you sleepy, you'll need a nap when I slap you with my dreads, lights out, you'll kiss the canvas' Before my eyes, I see the demise of another superhero Next up is Ras Kass versus Magneto Now anything goes when Magneto battles foes Ras Kass had him shivering, delivering ultra-magnetic blows Magneto was now deceased, and a wise man said it best "The sun rises in the east, but they can still set it the west" Now with all these heroes down, Stan Lee refuses to surrender He got Storm from the X-Men, as if I couldn't match the gender Stan Lee shouts 'Excelsior!' Yo, Stan you best to chill 'There's no match for Storm,' I guess he's never heard of Lauryn Hill Now we all know Storm controls the temperature and weather Started runnin' off at the lip, and L-Boog was like 'Whatever' See she just got home fom tours, she's a bit to tired to spar So she clocked Storm over the head with my man Wyclef's guitar All silence is ceased, out of nowhere comes the Beast Versus Jeru the Damaja, the Black Prophet from the east Releasing rhymes that will pound you into the ground, there'll be no round two Another victory for hip-hop from the Dirty Rotten Scoundrel Now the underground sewer system that lies deep below the ring Is where the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Das EFX do their thing Leonardo and Donatello, they both know we can do this 'So kiggedty crazy Drayze hit them both with raw sewage' Now Rafeal and Michaelangelo, those two others who are brothers Brooks smacked 'em with the Das EFX logo, the manhole cover Whether you're plant or animal, vegitable or miggety-mineral Before you step to Das EFX you best be hard like a criminal Taking you back to ringside, just when you thought it was over The last battle was brought forth by G.I.Joe and Cobra Mercenaries and soldiers, G.I. Joe was rollin' thick But I'll get the military of hip-hop, a.k.a. The Boot Camp Click World War Three for '98 in the wake of all these troops I could see general Buckshot goin toe to toe with Duke Salute the captain, for rappin, cause now we know who's hard Catchin wreck like Steele and Tek going up against the Crimson Gaurd Charging after you, smashin' you metaphorically smashin' through The entire Joe team is O.G.C. and Ruck the Irrational Then all of a sudden I hear this real loud crack! 'The military punisher Big Rock just broke Roadblock's back!' Adding insult to injury to Stan Lee and his team We've got Weapon X from Canada, a.k.a. Wolverine You know the routine, his claws can rip rappers for days But here comes the Method Man, a.k.a. Johnny Blaze! Wolverine you can't hang, when Tical does his thang Paralize you with the venom from the Method Man's fang! This is the final battle as the stratosphere gets darker We got Nasir Jones versus Peter Parker Nasty Nas at halftime, headringer versus the webslinger Illmatic versus radioactive in the rotten apple where the dead linger He cursed the day that spider ever bit him And gave him a copy of the second LP, It Was Written For all up and coming emcees, I've got a question If I made a Secret Wars Part Two, would your name even be mentioned? Would you make the final cut? I make even the nicest give their titles up Writing rhymes slash fighting crimes like the Blue Falcoln and Dynomutt Stick around for the next battle slash adventure And if you see Stan Lee, tell him that the Last Emperor sent ya