Swerve Strickland Talks Building His Rap Career From Scratch and Earning Veteran Co-Signs

Swerve Strickland has a platform in wrestling. Building one in rap is a different assignment. In a new Billboard interview, the AEW star discusses starting his music journey from scratch—and earning co-signs from Raekwon and Bun B along the way.

Strickland joins Carl Lamarre for Entry 023 of Mic Drops and Elbow Drops, putting his ambitions outside the ring at the center of the conversation. The framing is straightforward: visibility in one field does not automatically amount to credibility in another.

That distinction gives this story its weight. Rather than treating music as a ready-made extension of his wrestling profile, Strickland describes a process of building something new. The interview’s headline foregrounds his account of having to begin at zero, making the work of establishing himself—not simply his crossover status—the focus.

Two Co-Signs That Matter

The names attached to that journey are significant. Billboard’s summary specifically identifies Raekwon and Bun B as artists who have given Strickland their backing. For someone discussing his entry into rap, recognition from those two veterans is a notable part of the story.

A co-sign is not the same thing as a hit record, a feature or a formal partnership, and the supplied summary does not establish any of those developments. What it does establish is that Strickland’s conversation with Lamarre addresses support from respected artists alongside the challenge of getting started.

Those two threads belong together. Starting over is one part of a crossover story; finding acknowledgment within the culture is another. Here, the attention is on the distance between being known as a wrestler and being recognized for pursuing rap.

A Different Kind of Championship Chase

Billboard presents Strickland’s music ambitions through a championship lens, but the central idea is less about carrying a title into another arena than accepting a new starting line. A wrestling audience can know the name before a rap audience knows the music.

That makes this an introduction to a creative pursuit rather than a victory lap. The supplied material offers no new release date, tracklist or chart milestone to announce. Instead, it spotlights Strickland’s account of building from the ground up, with Raekwon and Bun B’s co-signs marking an important piece of that conversation.

The ring establishes who Swerve Strickland is to wrestling fans. This interview turns toward the separate task of establishing what his name means in hip-hop.