Tone Def!

-via

That’s the face of the one and only Stringer Bell from the seminal TV series The Wire. If you haven’t seen the Wire yet, stop what you’re doing and rent it, buy it, borrow it from a friend or do whatever is necessary to see it. Hell, it’s only $130.99 on Amazon right now for the complete series. Anyways, the Idris Elba played character was a key figure in the first few seasons of the series. He played the streetwise as well as business savvy administrator of the Barksdale organization. He was a bad ass mother, with hints of old school gangster in him.

Idris has a secondary career in hip hop that until now nobody seemed to have known about. He’s not been so underground though. In 2007 he co-produced and performed on the intro to Jay-Z’s 2007 album American Gangster. He DJ’d the NBA all star party in Vegas and the BET series, Rising Icons. At the end of last year he released and EP called King of Kings. Below is the video for the song Hold On from that album.

I got to say, I hate the whole skit bit at the beginning, but then I usually hate rap skits. The song opens up with a big bouncy dance beat. Vocally he sounds quite similar to Shaggy, but thankfully the music is listenable and the lyrics aren’t horrible. I’ve currently listened to the song 8 time’s in a row and don’t plan to stop until I figure it out completely. You got to give Idris Elba who goes by the name King Driis respect for actually having decent chops. I would have never guessed in a million years that he was capable of this. I could see this getting some club play this summer as it’s actually fairly danceable. In the end, it just goes to show how great The Wire was. On top of all the great acting, they had a rough gem like this hiding in there. I can only hope it’s not the last surprise the show has for us.

-Pop Matters