“Not gonna happen,” Wahlberg says empathically. “If I lost a bet… maybe.”
Although the younger Wahlberg got his break in hip-hop as the buff-Marky Mark in 1991, it didn’t take long for him to realize that his real talent was really in Hollywood, not Hollyhood.
“I felt like making movies was what I was supposed to be doing,” he says. “It was difficult to be who I really was with the record company always trying to get commercial success before I could really speak on the things that were important to me. And then there was the association with my brother.”
Even still, Wahlberg is not completely down on rap. Mentioning that he grew up rough, he’s able to relate to the tales that many of today’s rappers touch upon and says that Jay-Z, the Game and Nas are in constant rotation in his gym. Add that to his frequent movie appearances with rappers, the latest of which is the video-game based, Max Payne alongside Ludacris, and it’s clear that while he may be finished as an emcee, he’s still feeling the vibrations. –j.h.
