Prahlad Friedmann Takes The Rap

If he was annoying-but-talented as a poker pro he is arguably even more annoying and much-less-talented as a rap artist! I’m talking about poker badboy Prahlad Friedman who seems to have swapped the green felt for the hip-hop lifestyle as rapper ‘Pragress’ in his new video.

It’s not Friedman’s first foray into the rap world, with several poker-flavoured rap’s in the his ‘back-catalogue’ for want of a better phrase, but the production values of his latest outing – a ‘duet’ with Aida called ‘Hazy Eyez’, Friedmann’s partner in musical crime being a 22-year old Brazilian ‘singer/songwriter and producer’ – is far beyond his earlier messing around with the rhyming style which brought him a measure of fame.

Friedman as a poker player has been hugely successful, but often controversial. His tournament earnings reached almost $2.5million, with more in live and online highstakes games – but along the way he pissed off a lot of people with his arrogant attitude, almost getting a thumping from Aussie poker pro Jeff Lisandro for his trouble and not looking too clever in this compilation of terrible rulings from 2010.

Of course Prahlad ‘ SpiritRock aka Pragress’ Friedman is not the only poker pro to have dabbled in the rap world.

Finnish legend Illari Zigmund Sahamies also appeared in a rap video back in 2012 and as fellow PokerTube writer Florian Gheorghewrote this summer, when asked at the time whether rap could be his career after poker, the Finn responded confidently: “Yes, it will!” Back then, he didn’t write his own rap songs but he did say he was willing to try it.”

Fast forward to 2015, and Sahamies appeared in another Finnish rap video alongside three other rappers who call themselves the Teflon Brothers. Apparently, he has been part of the band since 2014 and he actually paid €50,000 to join them. Money definitely ain’t a thing for Sahamies when it comes to rap.

In the world of poker rap battles things get much worse, even if the ‘battles’ are meant as a joke!

Check out this horrifically bad fight between online poker’s most consistently winning player Chris ‘Moorman1’ Moorman and WSOP bracelet winner James ‘Flushy’ Dempsey…

…or this mismatch between Pete "The Saurus" Morris, “a veteran battler and long-time poker enthusiast” who accepted a rap battle challenge from BLUFF columnist Alex "Assassinato" Fitzgerald at the WSOP.