THUGONOMICS BEAATCCHHH
from Boston Globe


West Tisbury native John Cena

HAVERHILL -- Pro wrestling star John Cena toyed with his custom lowrider before a workout at World's Gym. Nearby, a group of boys swooned over the tilting and bouncing effects produced by the car's hydraulics. The onlookers, recognizing Cena from television, approached him, and he extended his hand.

"Yo, your rhymes are tight," one of the boys said, concluding the hippest of handshake variations known as a "dap." It was as if the boy had met a real rapper, and in a way he had. But he had also met one of World Wrestling Entertainment's hottest, most promising properties.
Cena, a 26-year-old native of West Newbury, has turned himself into a star by fusing two lifelong passions, wrestling and hip-hop. And he has cast hip-hop in a new light for wrestling's movers and shakers. He's taken the "rapping wrestler," previously a corny novelty act, and given it a zealous, hip new image. The promotional efforts WWE is putting into this rapping grappler confirm that Cena is no joke. "Finally the company realized that there's a movement going on out there and they're missing it," said Cena, who comes to the FleetCenter tonight with the WWE for a taping of "Smackdown." "They're still ignorant about hip-hop, but they're willing to learn."

Some facts about West Tisbury (on the Vineyard), John Cena's hometown:
source: MA DOR

• Population 2467
• Average anual salary (2001) $33,456
• Unemployment rate (2001) .4%
• Moody's Bond Rating: A3

More

WWE executives know they're well advised to learn, quickly. Hip-hop has become the dominant form of pop music; last fall, for the first time in history, all top 10 songs on the Billboard charts were by black artists, nine of them by hip-

hop performers. Although Cena is white, he represents wrestling's best shot thus far at tapping this market. In fact, WWE scriptwriters originally wanted Cena to parody Eminem, the rapper whose film "8 Mile" was packing theaters at the time Cena debuted his character. WWE expected comic relief: The hip-hop wrestler shtick had been tried before with black wrestlers who ended up as mere caricatures. Cena gave the writers comedy but talked them into mocking Vanilla Ice instead.

Cena said knowing the difference between mocking Eminem, a respected rapper with street credibility, and mocking Vanilla Ice, a hip-hop whipping boy, got him off to the right start and is one of the reasons he connected with the rapping wrestler character that had been laughed into obscurity many times before. "For me to dress up like [Eminem] and poke fun at him would've been more controversial than it would've been humorous," he said. "So right away I wanted to dress up as Vanilla Ice, I wanted to totally overdo it. . . . Everybody made fun of Vanilla Ice at one time or another."

WWE marketers seem to sense the authenticity in Cena's presentation and speak of him in the most positive terms. "John has an image that appeals directly to the cultural driver for the last 10 years, which is hip-hop," said Dan Levi, WWE vice president of marketing. "We would be making a huge mistake if we were not trying to do as much as possible to build him into as big a star as possible."

Levi sees a parallel between the emerging "hip-hop demographic" and "the sweet spot" of WWE's audience: They both attract male viewers between the ages of 12 and 35.

"Our success comes from our superstars cutting across the world of `sports entertainment' into pop culture," Levi said. Hulk Hogan's likeness appeared on Saturday morning CBS cartoons and children's vitamin bottles. The Rock stars in blockbuster action films.

For his part, Cena recently finished cutting an 18-track album in the Bass Camp studios in Lynnfield. He invoked the stylings of local hip-hop notables Esoteric and 7L, whose album "Soul Purpose" won the Boston Music Award for best hip-hop album in 2001. Cena is pushing for a summer release for a record that will probably be titled "Underground."

Pretty impressive for a character originally presented as a spoof on Vanilla Ice. Cena says he's caught the WWE by surprise.

"I know they didn't expect anything from it, because WWE had never really fully focused on hip-hop," he said. "I kept coming out and being serious. I wouldn't take a joke gimmick and let it die. It was something I believed in."

In a business where originality on the mike is paramount, Cena has found a way to chide opponents in a unique way -- freestyle rapping.

On an edition of "Smackdown" last year, Cena targeted Chris Benoit, an opponent who had just recovered from spinal fusion surgery and had lost teeth in battle: "Don't you ever tell me who I can and can't respect/ You'll wind up in surgery, with another broken neck/ At least you're all set when you get your release/ If you ever go broke, rent the space between your teeth."

"When you hear John's stuff, the crowd loves it in the same way someone at an MC battle would," said Esoteric, the Beverly-born Seamus Ryan, who helped produce Cena's album.

"I haven't earned my stripes yet as a true studio MC as far as making music," Cena said. "But as far as freestyling, man, I've been doing that since I was like 13."

Which is why, he says, fans can sense he's more than an act.

"I think they see the energy . . . what you see on TV is who I am," he said. "I know our audience because I was our audience."

It could be said that Cena has been wrestling since he was 10, on the living room floor of his West Newbury home with his four brothers. Cena's father, also named John, has constantly had wrestling flickering on the tube since the '60s.

Wrestling, though, didn't mean "a hill of beans" to John's mother, Carol, who remembers little John expressing interest in pediatrics and school teaching. The possibility of rapping factoring into his future seemed even more remote.

"I would not have associated the rap music with this type of career," she said. "So, to me, he's got the best of both worlds. What kind of better outcome could you get?"

While Cena's dad is surprised that the rap gig has caught fire, he can see where the personality is rooted. "John always rapped. . . . He believes in it, he works at it, and he promotes it," he said. "There's no gimmick about him. The hip-hop is genuine. It's for real."

West Newbury, a rural town that is 98 percent white, is not exactly a breeding ground for rappers. "When I was 13 years old, I was listening to hip-hop so much I was dressing like MC Hammer, I was dressing like Vanilla Ice," Cena said, remembering the days of airbrushed overalls and baggy, polka-dotted pants. "Not many kids around here were doing that. I would get ragged on a lot."

To top it off, Cena was the skinny kid on the block. So when he was 13, he asked his dad for a Joe Weider weight set for Christmas. Cena began to put on muscle, and in time the bullying subsided.

Cena began training religiously at the Hard Nock's Gym in Amesbury. The owner, David Nock, watched as Cena wowed locals in bodybuilding competitions across Massachusetts in the mid-'90s. "By the time he was 19, he was the best in this area in terms of bodybuilding," Nock said.

His impressive physique touched off a local reaction that echoed a stigma pro wrestlers have long faced: Was he clean?

"The poor guy has been tested probably 50 times and has never failed a test," Nock said. "Any time you see a body like that it's going to raise eyebrows. People like him come along every once in a while."

Cena went west, familiarizing himself with the same Venice Beach bodybuilding scene once ruled by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Too big for fitness modeling and too small for bodybuilding, Cena found his niche in a wrestling ring.

Cena didn't rap when he started wrestling, and he didn't start wrestling to rap. He began on a small California circuit as "The Prototype," a robotic warrior ideally tuned for pro wrestling who used unique voice effects when verbally intimidating opponents. Dave Meltzer, editor of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, saw a charisma in Cena that is rare but coveted in wrestling, and his speaking ability was renowned from day one.

"You could just tell he had an audience connection right away," Meltzer said. "He was going to be a star without this rap gimmick."

In his first WWE television appearance in June 2002, Cena was cast as a simplistic, clean-cut rookie with a hunger to win; his gift of gab was rarely showcased.

Then at a backstage event in Birmingham, England, Cena shone in an impromptu rap-off with fellow wrestlers, catching the attention of Stephanie McMahon-Levesque, a WWE executive who is the daughter of wrestling impresario Vince McMahon. McMahon-Levesque put Cena on the spot on the flight back from England, challenging him to rap off the top of his head.

"At 3 a.m., after a long night of wrestling, Cena proceeded to rap for two minutes all about some tuna I was eating," she said. "Needless to say, he made a big impression on me then and has ever since."

The ball was rolling. Cena debuted his rap ability on a Halloween 2002 edition of "Smackdown." Costumed in a sequin suit and overblown wig, Cena came to the "Smackdown Halloween Party" parodying Vanilla Ice. For the first time, he rapped on television.

"It was pretty meaningless and very vague, but at the same time it was John Cena rapping, something that people had never seen," he said.

Soon Cena was subtly taking the character to the next level, and today he is known as "The Doctor of Thuganomics."

"It was a very slow, sleeper type of thing," he said. "And then it just all of a sudden blew up, and I was in your face."

posted by prof_booty | 12:36 PM