The 6 Most Embarrassing Rapper Cameos in Horror Films
These might not be the best horror movies to check out this Halloween.
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As a fan, the joy of watching horror movies isn’t just seeing people killed in inventive ways or getting the shit scared out of you—the audience also gets to see actors and actresses ham it up to varying degrees of scene-chewing cheesiness. But with the influx of new and established talents throwing in their own twist on being hardened survivors or unlucky victims, more recently the genre has decided to throw in cameos by musicians and non-actors to connect better with their bloodthirsty audience.
In the early 90’s, hip-hop was becoming a highly bankable and popular musical genre in the mainstream, so the the movie industry took note and started casting rappers in movies for no reason other than to bring in the hip Generation Next crowd. This worked to varying degrees (Ice Cube is still laughing to the bank from the Are We There Yet? Cinematic universe), but the most shameless version of the method was featuring rappers in horror movies. Breaking down this list of embarrassing horror movie cameos took us far and wide, and included way too many Leprechaun in The Hood entries to get through—but we think we’ve found the worst. From the absolutely non-sensical to the most #problematic, the “actors” in these roles were the most gratuitously bad attempts to connect horror movies to an urban audience ever conceived.
LL Cool J
Movie: Halloween H2O: 20 Years Later (1998)
Directed By: Steve Miner
Role: Ronny, security guard
"Famous" Quote: "Ah, fuck me. Shit."
There aren’t many good things to say about the incredibly long-winded Halloween: H20: 20 Years Later (say that five times fast), the retcon-filled 20th anniversary sequel that no one asked for. It had flat characters (Josh Hartnett did himself no favors here), an all-star cast of actors like Alan Arkin who couldn’t care less about being there, and the return of Jamie Lee Curtis to collect one more check from a depleted franchise. However, nothing says cash-grab quite like LL Cool J’s character, a security guard named Ronny, to the movie. He isn’t as cool as his character in Deep Blue Sea, where the writers actually changed the ending to keep him alive—Ronny was written to try and use what little of LL’s magnetic persona he had left from starring in bad movies and attempt to make him Will Smith. He is there to say, “Oh, hell naw!” and tell white people they’re acting crazy—oh, and he likes big women, too. That’s funny, right? The most interesting aspect of Ronny is that LL seems to have a clause in his contract where he can’t die, because he implausibly survives being shot and makes it to the end of the movie.
Ice-T
Movie: Leprechaun in the Hood (2000)
Directed By: Rob Spera
Role: Mac Daddy Onassis
"Famous" Quote: "I'm gonna cut off your dick, then I'm gonna feed it to my pit, then I'm gonna burn the shit when it comes out of my goddamn dog's ass, you hear me? Don't fuck with me, bitch!"
Before the series took a deep dive into thinly veiled minstrelsy, Leprechaun was a harmless, if not a little silly, horror vehicle where people got killed in cartoonish ways. Of course they had to fuck all of that up when the writers found out that rap was the hottest thing at the moment. Leprechaun in the Hood (yes, that’s the name) is a mentally draining “black horror comedy” that aims to let viewers into the cutthroat world of the music industry by using the bare minimum of sensible writing and so many offensive stereotypes that your head will spin like one of Leprechaun’s victims. Through a four leaf clover-induced drug haze, zombified “fly girls,” and crossdressing, Ice-T steps up to the occasion as Mac Daddy Onassis, an evil record executive who imprisoned the diminutive demon. Even though he was clearly the best actor among the principal cast, Ice-T is merely a caricature of his rap persona, spouting some god awful lines for most of his screen time. At least his death scene was cool, though.
Busta Rhymes
Movie: Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
Directed By: Rick Rosenthal
Role: Freddie Harris
"Famous" Quote: "Hey Mikey! Happy fuckin' Halloween!"
Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween: Resurrection was one more attempt at squeezing money from Michael Myer’s reanimated corpse—this time taking aim at America’s love of reality TV. The movie is a great example of what happens when you do too much with a simple premise, and also why it’s a bad idea to cast Busta Rhymes in your movies. Busta’s character, director Freddie Harris, ambles around the movie as if he’s high on Xanax and delivers his lines as if he too is saying, “Are these motherfuckers serious?” To make matters worse, we desperately hope he meets his end several times in the movie, only for him to survive again and again. (Does he have a “I can’t die” clause in his contract like LL Cool J?) The most disrespectful and embarrassing part of allowing Freddie to live is that in a completely bewildering piece of writing, he beats Michael Myers up. In a scene that likely killed the franchise (again) until Rob Zombie killed it (again), and was likely written in by Busta himself, Freddie does the Daniel-san crane kick and beats Michael’s ass. It’s at that moment you realize that, yes, those motherfuckers were serious—and that Busta Rhymes just destroyed the Halloween franchise.
Trey Songz
Movie: Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)
Directed By: John Lussenhop
Role: Ryan
"Famous" Quote: "It was one time. ONE TIME! And I had like 18 Kamikazes. And I'm begging you to keep your hands off MY SHIT."
This one is a stretch, but Trey Songz has been toeing the line between rapper and singer, so I say it's fair game. The latest resurrection of Texas Chainsaw saw the series cash-in on the 3D craze, but cash out on anything that made the original movies any good. Trey Songz plays the—spoiler, as if you’ll watch this anyway—lecherous, cheating boyfriend of the main character in the movie and he has all of the charisma of a wooden table leg. Meandering through his lines like he is being held at gunpoint, Trey does the already weak script no favors, as you pretty much stare at your watches until he meets his grisly demise. Interesting thing to note here: Trey doesn’t have an ironclad agreement to survive until the end like LL Cool J and Busta Rhymes, but HIS OWN MUSIC (“2 Reasons”) starts playing during one scene in the movie. Keep cashing them checks, I guess.
Snoop Dogg
Movie: Bones (2001)
Directed By: Ernest Dickerson
Role: Jimmy Bones
"Famous" Quote: "Gangsta of love don't eat no fried chicken!"
Created as way to not only misguidedly ruin Blaxploitation and squeeze in as many inside jokes as possible within 80 minutes, Bones is pretty much an embarrassing movie for everyone involved. It says on the synopsis and the back of the DVD cover that Snoop Dogg “plays” former number runner Jimmy Bones (try not to chuckle at that name), who returns from the dead to put away the gangsters who are destroying his community. In reality, he’s just playing himself with a perm, some absolutely despicable one-liners (“I’m on a high...a supernatural high”), and some cheap looking suits. The movie even manages to drag down veterans like Pam Grier and Clifton Powell, who sleepwalk their way through this hilariously bad movie. I’d like to say that this was one of Snoop’s most damning roles, but Soul Plane came out three years later.
Redman
Movie: Seed of Chucky (2004)
Directed By: Don Mancini
Role: Himself (Yep, that's right)
"Famous" Quote: "I had a vasectomy as soon as I got to Hollywood—I ain't no idiot!"
Sometimes I wonder if Seed of Chucky—the unnecessary sequel that tried and failed to be a black comedy poking fun at Hollywood—is actually a movie. It attempts to up the ante from the equally ridiculous, but somehow still grounded, Bride of Chucky, but loses itself in trying to be a cheeky, self-aware horror parody. When Chucky isn’t winking at the camera like he’s Bugs Bunny, the movie struggles to tell the story of a washed up Jennifer Tilly who pulls double duty as herself and the demonic doll Tiffany in the film. For no other reason than to have a black person to kill, Redman happens to be the guy who can help. The movie’s unbearably convoluted plot doesn’t leave much for him to do other than be #problematic—he acts so much like a misogynistic pig that you’d think the writers of the movie think that all rappers act that way IRL. He gets his comeuppance by way of evisceration after proudly proclaiming that he’s received a vasectomy. Throw this movie, and Redman’s acting career, in rice.