Last year, Joaquin Phoenix startled a good few of us when he announced that he was retiring from acting to pursue a career in music.  Many were rather skeptical, and most pictured something like Walk the Line, with Phoenix a strummin’ and a singin’.  Of course, those folks all turned out to be wrong.

It has now been announced that Casey Affleck is following Phoenix and filming his musical endeavours for a documentary, but those of us who have been paying really close attention have known this since November at least.  Back then, a number of images surfaced of Phoenix performing at Funkmosphere in Culver City - one of which is above.  Below the break I’ll give you the actual surprising news as well where to see a video of Phoenix rapping.

Now, what I find oddest about all of this is that P Diddy is producing Phoenix’s album.  That doesn’t quite sit right.  I had him down as a more Jay-Z sort of fellow.  And I’m not kidding.  I know next to nothing about either P Diddy or Jay-Z, but from the general vibes they give off, their videos, and to some extent their music, I thought Phoenix belonged on the other team.  A quick search turned up images of the two of them together.

TMZ have what appears to be cell phone video of Phoenix doing his thing, and… er… it’s too late to tell him not to give up the day job, isn’t it?  The “Oh my god” at 2:10 or so says it all.

I’m more interested to see what manner of documentarian Casey Affleck is than how Phoenix does/doesn’t set the hip-hop community alight. I just hope Affleck is actually documenting a music career here and not a slide into tragedy and unpleasantness.