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‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage, wrestler … and rapper
“Macho Man” Randy Savage may be gone, but the wrestling legend’s larger-than-life personality remains, in memory and in in the grooves of Be a Man, his cult-status 2003 rap album. On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, the St. Pete-produced novelty CD is being pressed on vinyl – for the first time – for Record Store Day (coming April 22).
Although mainstream music media roundly dissed Be a Man with no holds barred, the Slam Wrestling site gave it faint praise. Beneath the headline SAVAGE’S CD DOESN’T SUCK, the reviewer wrote: “Listening to Savage rap lines about getting the crowd pumped up and critics and haters is amusing and fun. It is catchy and gets stuck in your head.”
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The Be a Man saga began with St. Petersburg businessman Bill Edwards, whose Big3 Records employed, among other artists, a hip hop production collective known as Da Raskulls.
Edwards ran into the imposing athlete following a business meeting at the Don CeSar, and as they chatted a lightbulb went on. “He has this unique voice that nobody else has,” Edwards told vice.com in 2015. “I thought that his notoriety and popularity and everything would carry a record … Just the fact that he was Macho Man, people would come.”
1990s. Publicity photo.
True dat. Born Randy Mario Poffo, the Ohio native was one of the most colorful characters in the high-testosterone stable of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) from 1985 to 1994 and World Championship Wrestling (WCW) from 1994 to 2000.
With his chainsaw growl of a voice, loud clothes, oversized shades, bulging biceps and “ooooh yeah!” catchphrase, Savage cut a cartoonish figure, and at his peak in the mid 1990s was wrestling’s most recognized personality.
By 2003, he had already been a celebrity spokesman for Slim Jim beef jerky, and had played a wrestler called Bonesaw McGraw in the first Spider-Man movie.
So when Bill Edwards suggested they work together, “Macho Man” Randy Savage was in the market for another new adventure.
The first task was getting him into the Big3 recording studio with Da Raskulls – Khalid Keene, Brian Overton, Ted Howard and Jerome “Rome” Henderson.
Said Keene to vice.com: “First thing, Macho says, ‘OK, I want you guys to realize – I’ve got white boy rhythm. You’ve got to be real patient with me.’”
The big man’s first attempts were disastrous. Remembered Edwards: “Everyone in the room looked at me and said ‘Are you serious?’ It was ugly. It was sad.”
It took nearly a year to make the Be a Man album. “It was really tough for Randy, because he wasn’t a natural rapper,” said Tom Gribbin, Big3’s executive vice president at the time. “So Khalid had to go with him, line by line, to do the rap.”
Rather than record an entire song in one go, Savage’s lines were “comped” – recorded separately and assembled like a jigsaw puzzle.
Still, explains Gribbin, “Randy’s work ethic was really good. He took to this like it was the gym. He’d go ‘I don’t know if I can do it, but it won’t be because I don’t work at it.’ He worked hard. And those guys worked him hard.”
Edwards said as much in the vice.com interview. “Everything he did, he did with intensity … His work ethic was beyond what I’d seen in the industry.”
The album, which clocks in at less than 45 minutes, includes titles such as “Macho Thang,” “RU Ready,” “Let’s Get it On” and “Gonna Be Trouble.”
The title track, the only one on which Savage is credited as a co-writer, takes aim at former friend and longtime rival Hulk Hogan, with whom Savage was embroiled in a real, honest-to-goodness feud (not the wrestling kind):
Hot diggity damn Hulk I’m glad you set it off (set if off)
Used to be hard Hulk now ya done turned soft
Doin telephone commercials I seen ya
Dancin in tights as a ballerina
I knew all along you had those tendencies
Cuz you’ve been runnin from Macho like I got a disease
Dude, please, your pay per view event was a joke
You’re avoidin Randy Savage cause you know you’ll get smoked
Come on that phony fight the Rock spanked you fast
But when I challenged Hogan to a real fight he passed
I called him out but the punk was scared to go
It was a charity event but the Hulk didn’t show
Hollywood Hulkster, you’re at the end of your rope
And I’m a kick ya in the butt and wash your mouth out with soap
Cause like Rodney Dangerfield you gets no respect
So come on Hulk let’s wreck so I can put you in check.
At the time, Hogan was friendly with Tampa radio “shock jock” Bubba the Love Sponge (their relationship soured years later and ended up in the courts).
Gribbin: “When we went out do the record live, at Mr. B’s on Treasure Island, Bubba got on the air and called up ‘Bubba’s Army’ to go disrupt it. They all came to intimidate Randy.
“He would play parts of it on the air, saying ‘Aw, this sucks’ and all that. And we thought it was great – I told Randy, even bad press is good press. He (Bubba) was always talking about it.”
Big3 Records reported that Be a Man sold approximately 15,000 copies. Savage and Hogan eventually settled their dispute.
Randy Savage died May 20, 2011, when he suffered a heart attack at the wheel of his car, in Pinellas County. He was 58.
For his part, Gribbin is proud of the Be a Man project. “He wasn’t a rapper, he was Macho Man! And that carried it. Wrestling was rap before there was rap. All that puffery talk that rappers do, it’s never about anything sensitive – I got more money than you, I got more chains than you.
“I explained that to Randy. I said, you guys have been doing this same thing – without beats – for years. And he got into it.”
