Leonardo DiCaprio has shown his Hip Hop fandom in pieces in the past, but the actor put it on full display over the weekend when he emphatically rapped Gang Starr bars at his birthday bash.
The Titanic star turned 49 over the weekend and celebrated with a star-studded party in Beverly Hills on Saturday (November 11). Per E! News, attendees included the likes of Beyoncé, JAY-Z, Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, Salma Hayek, 2 Chainz, Chris Rock, Rita Ora and more — and the playlist was equally as lit.
At one point, DiCaprio grabbed the mic to rap Greg Nice’s verse from Gang Starr and Nice & Smooth’s 1992 classic, “DWYCK.”
“I say Muhammad Ali, ya say Cassius Clay/ I say butter, you say Parkay/ It’s alright if ya wanna make a sway/ I’m a way Uptown, took deuce to the tre!” Leo can be seen rapping in a clip from the party.
Watch the clip below:
Clearly a ’90s Hip Hop enthusiast, in 2021, Raekwon revealed he’d previously met up with Leonardo DiCaprio at a pizza spot in Brooklyn to discuss making a Wu-Tang Clan biopic following the success of N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton.
“We had a great time, eating pizza, telling stories, laughing and shit,” he explained. “Then we started talking about the possibility of a Wu-Tang movie and I told Leo I’d love to see him play a role in it, anything he wanted to do. He talked about his production company and all the directors he thought might do a great job — and these were big names and people he’d worked with.
“He was super open to the idea, and after that meal, he had his production company executives reach out to me. We took it to the next level with them. They were very interested, so we got the ball rolling, talking real numbers, with the goal of an even bigger release than Straight Outta Compton.”
Raekwon couldn’t wait to “blow RZA’s mind” with the news that DiCaprio was ready to raise all the money for a movie — provided every Wu-Tang member was on board. RZA agreed to meet with executives, but Raekwon says he looked uncomfortable from the get-go.
Pras: Leonardo DiCaprio Testifies In Fugees Member’s Criminal Conspiracy Trial
“I’ve known the guy for years and seen him act all kinds of ways, and in that moment, I saw him playing a role,” he said. “He sat there, taking it in, watching to see how far I could get. At the end of the meeting, without emotion, he just said, ‘Okay, I’ll get back to you,’ and Leo’s people left. I sat there with my index finger to my temple, elbow on my armrest, leaning back in the chair, staring at him.”
Raekwon tried to explain to RZA how big of an opportunity he felt it was and thought they left the conversation on a positive note. They ended up setting up another meeting that could potentially close the deal, but he sensed RZA’s attitude had changed.
“He barely said anything and seemed to be going through the motions, nothing more,” Raekwon said. “I could tell he wasn’t going to agree to do it, and my instincts told me why: my guess is that he was already in bed with a production company, deep into developing the scripted series for TV, even though none of us had signed off on it.”
RZA apparently argued a series would be a better way to tell their story, that it would be around longer and that streaming was the way to go rather than movie theaters. And a few years later, Wu-Tang: An American Sagaarrived on Hulu.