Walking in the St. Albans neighborhood of Queens, New York, LL Cool J said, “I love this hood, man. Love this neighborhood. Love everything about it. Love the energy. I made a name for myself rappin’ around here.”
LL Cool J is still a neighborhood hero here. Forty years after his first record, he is a walking embodiment of hip-hop history, which doesn’t mean he’s retired. Last week, at the MTV Video Music Awards, he celebrated his extraordinary track record.
LL Cool J performs at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards:
Asked what he thinks has kept people interested in his work for so many years, he replied, “I just continuously do what I love. And I know an apple tree keeps giving fruit, an orange tree keeps giving fruit, until it’s gone. So, I just keep giving.”
His career began in his childhood bedroom, in the basement of his grandmother’s house in Queens. “You’re in the museum,” he said. “You in Graceland, baby.”
He still has boxes filled with old demo tapes, and handwritten rhymes. For him, this was his artist’s studio. “I wrote ‘Rock The Bells’ down here. I wrote ‘I Need Love’ down here. I wrote ‘I’m Bad,’ like, in the car and down here.”
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He said this basement was the place where dreams come true. As a boy, James Todd Smith also saw this basement as a refuge.
Sanneh asked, “I think a lot of people who experience what you experienced – you’ve seen your father shoot your mother, you get abuse from your mother’s ex-boyfriend, you go through these really difficult things – don’t come out of it the way you came out of it.”
“Yeah. You know, life is funny,” said LL. “You can use things as an excuse for failure, or a reason to succeed. When my mother was shot, they told us they didn’t think she’d walk again. She walked again.
“Using the things that happen in your life to propel you towards your dreams is probably the healthiest way to deal with anything that happens,” he said.
He was largely raised by his grandparents. They bought him turntables to keep him in the house (and out of trouble). It was a more important gift than they could have imagined. “It really was just wanting to escape pain,” he said. “It was an escape, you know what I’m saying? And so, the music became, like, a way to feel empowered.”
LL Cool J (short for “Ladies Love Cool James”) started writing rhymes and recorded a demo tape, and in 1984, the right person found it. Adam Horovitz, known as Ad Rock from the Beastie Boys, was friends with producer Rick Rubin, who had just started his record label, Def Jam. “I would just kind of go through demo tapes,” Horovitz said. “Something about [LL] just sounded really cool. I don’t know, he sounded interesting.”
Horovitz convinced Rubin to listen to him; and he remembers when LL came by to meet them: “So, a teenager walks in and he’s like, ‘I’m LL Cool J. And the LL stands for Ladies Love Cool James.’ And you’re just, you know, a high school kid? The ladies love you? Okay, all right. If you say so! He was real confident, and he should have been. He was really good at what he did.
“He is a force, but I never would have predicted that LL Cool J would be what he is now, never,” Horovitz said. “LL’s personality, his inner light, like, shines. It really does.”
Horovitz helped produce LL Cool J’s first single, “I Need a Beat.”
That track got LL a record deal, although you might say it got the record company an LL deal; he was the first artist ever signed to Def Jam Recordings.
Getting the deal, LL said, “felt like Christmas, honeymoon, hitting the lottery, jumping out of an airplane, a roller coaster, all at once. it was the best feeling in the world. Best feeling in the WORLD, getting that deal!”
LL Cool J became one of the first major hip-hop stars. Hits like “Going Back to Cali” and “Mama Said Knock You Out” blazed a trail for other rappers to follow.
And in 1987, he pioneered a new tradition: the hip-hop love song, with “I Need Love.”
His music career turned into a career in film, and then on television: For 14 seasons, he played special agent Sam Hanna on “NCIS: Los Angeles,” which mainly kept him away from the recording studio. “I thought the show would last two years and it’d be done,” he said. “I had no idea that ‘NCIS’ would be so huge. And I’m very grateful. I had a great time doing it. But you can’t be a part-time MC. You can’t really be a part-time musician. There’s no such thing.”
Now 56, LL Cool J is returning to the thing he loves most: rapping. He recently released his first album in more than a decade, “The Force,” which includes appearances from Eminem and other rappers who grew up listening to him.
You can stream the LL Cool J album “The Force” by clicking on the embed below (Free Spotify registration required to hear the tracks in full):
He says there’s still something magical about making a hip-hop record: “My job is to go into a room and paint on silence, and then say, ‘Listen to this.’ Like, it’s easy to sit around and judge it or say, ‘That album was better than that album.’ But can you go in a room, paint on silence, present it to the world, and have them enjoy it? Can you do that?”
LL Cool J says he’s still having fun making music, which doesn’t mean he doesn’t want people to pay attention. “I love the idea that you’re talking to a hip hop artist in Year 40, and his record is relevant and impacting the culture,” he said.
“They were talking about it on the radio this morning,” said Sanneh.
“I love it,” he laughed. “I love it. I love it. Because you know why? Not only for me, I love it for future generations. I love that they get to see, ‘Oh, I can keep doing what I love?’ Yeah!”
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Story produced by Robbyn McFadden. Editor: Lauren Barnello.
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