Redman continues to expand his Hollywood resume by tapping back into his Hip Hop roots. The veteran MC from Newark, NJ has lent his voice to the theme song for Netflix’s upcoming animated series, My Dad the Bounty Hunter.
The series stars Laz Alonso voicing the titular dad, Sabo Brok, and Yvonne Orji as mom, Tess. Their two kids, Lisa and Sean, are voiced by Priah Ferguson and Jecobi Swan.
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In the action-comedy, the close-knit siblings stow away on their dad’s latest work trip, hoping to finally get some quality time together. However, they come to find out their dad has been keeping a secret–that he’s the toughest bounty hunter in the galaxy.
“I love being a part of a project that has purpose,” Redman says in an exclusive behind the scenes clip. Tess and Sabo are separated and their kids are coping with this new reality, an aspect of the show Redman could relate to.
“The reason I liked it….if you watched the first couple of episodes, the dad didn’t actually live with his kids,” he tells HipHopDX. “Him and the moms are separated. So instead of just showing the old happy life of a whole, full family in the one house, it’s not always like that.
“I didn’t live with my dad. My dad skipped town when I was about maybe 14 or whatever. But he didn’t skip town, he just moved right around the corner and shit. So I was able to literally walk to his house. But it showed a family that was separated a little bit. The moms had the kids and the dad came over and still had the respect of his kids. So that’s one of the main reasons why I applauded this series as well, because it showed a little vulnerability of a real family. Not all families are perfect.”
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Redman also connected with the story as a father himself and feels there are lessons to be learned in the series even for experienced parents.
“As a dad we never stop learning,” he says. “No matter how old you get, you never stop learning about life and how you can better yourself as a man, first of all. And as you better yourself as a man and get more aware of who you are and more loving of yourself, which is going to help you to portray the person who you are to your kids.”
The Funk Doc practices what he preaches, having moved many of his followers on Instagram to near tears in 2018 when he posted a video of him caring for his own aging and ailing father.
“I helped a lot of people [by posting] that because there’s a lot of people that’s going through that with their parents, where they get to an age where they have to care for their parents. It was rough on me and my sister. It was rough because I knew that he didn’t want to be where he was at. And me and my sister, we just couldn’t get along for the love of our life to get him right where he needed to be; I’m beefing with her, it was a mess. And he passed away. He passed away a year or so ago. He passed away comfortably, but he passed away not around his family, he passed away in the hospital.
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“And a lot of people did hit me. They was like, ‘Yo, man, my pops passed away a year ago, so thank you for that.’ And then people would send me, ‘I’m going through that right now, so thank you for this video.’”
As for the theme song, recording it was a first for the MC extraordinaire, as he didn’t write the lyrics he performed. The production team, EL3VATORS, reached out to Redman to provide his unique voice and energy to their track.
“So EL3VATORS, them some good dudes. I never in my life spit a verse that somebody wrote. I always write my own shit. But the brothers who did it, they actually are brothers in real life, and they got their own production team. And it wasn’t like they wrote it for me, they just had it written and they wanted me to spit it. So I added a couple of touches here and there. But anything to help my brothers to succeed in the music industry, or the film industry, or any industry working with one another, I’m all for it.”
With a filmography that includes How High, Red & Meth, and Power Book II: Ghost, it stands to reason Mr. Noble would welcome appearing in a Netflix series of his own some day.
“Yo, what’s funny is I told them like, ‘I will be a part of this series.’ And they said, ‘Okay, we’re going to write you in the next season,’ or something like that,” he says. “Yeah, I would love to be a part of an animated series. I actually wrote something.
“I started on a comic book with my boys from Riverton Entertainment out in Cali, Andrew and Scott. And we working on something right now, so hopefully it can blow out to something…to a real situation in the next year or so. And I would love to be a part of that, Bro. I love animation.”
My Dad The Bounty Hunter premieres February 9 on Netflix.
