Walking through the St. Albans neighborhood of New York, Queens, LL Cool J said, “I love this neighborhood. I love this neighborhood. I love everything about it. I love the energy. I made my name rapping here.”
LL Cool J is still a hero around here. Forty years after his first record, he’s still a part of hip-hop history, and he’s not retired. Last week, MTV Video Music AwardsHe praised his own impressive track record.
LL COOL J performing at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards:
When asked why he thinks people remain interested in his work after all these years, he replied: “I just keep doing what I love. I know that an apple tree keeps on giving and an orange tree keeps on giving until there are no more fruits left. So I just keep on giving.”
His career began in his childhood bedroom in the basement of his grandmother’s house in Queens. “You’re in a museum,” he said. “You’re in Graceland, baby.”
He still has boxes full of old demo tapes and handwritten rhymes, and this was his artist’s studio: “I wrote ‘Rock the Bells’ here. I wrote ‘I Need Love’ here. I wrote ‘I’m Bad’ here, in the car.”
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This basement, he said, is a place where dreams come true. As a boy, James Todd Smith also saw it as a place of refuge.
“I think a lot of people who have had really bad experiences, like seeing their father shoot their mother or being abused by their mother’s ex-boyfriend, don’t come out of it the same way you did,” Sanne asked.
“Yeah, life is funny,” LL said. “Things can be used as excuses for failure or reasons for success. When my mom was shot, the police said they didn’t think she’d ever walk again, but she did.”
“Using the events that happen in your life to move towards your dreams is probably the healthiest way to deal with anything that happens,” he said.
He was primarily raised by his grandparents, who bought him a turntable so he could stay at home (and out of trouble), a gift that proved more important than they could have ever imagined. “I just wanted to escape the pain, really,” he says. “It was an escape, you know? So music became, like, a means to power.”
LL COOL J (short for “Ladies Love Cool James”) started writing rhymes and recording a demo tape, and in 1984 the right person found him: Adam Horowitz, better known as Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys, was friends with producer Rick Rubin, who had just started the record label Def Jam. “I was listening to the demo tape,” Horowitz says. “Something about (LL) sounded really cool. I don’t know what it was, but he sounded interesting.”
Horowitz convinced Rubin to hear his story, and he remembers when LL came to see him: “So this teenager comes up and says, ‘I’m LL COOL J. LL is Ladies Love COOL James.’ You’re just a high school kid? Women love you? Okay, okay. If you say so! He was really confident, and he should be. He was really good at what he did.”
“He’s an influential guy, but I never would have predicted that LL Cool J would become what he is now,” Horowitz said. “LL’s personality, his inner light, shines through. He really does.”
Horowitz helped produce LL COOL J’s first single, “I Need a Beat.”
The song not only got LL a record deal, but it also got the record company to sign him: he was the first artist signed to Def Jam Recordings.
LL said of the moment the deal went through, “It felt like Christmas, a honeymoon, winning the lottery, jumping out of a plane and riding a rollercoaster all at once. It was the best feeling in the world! When this deal went through, it was the best feeling in the world!”
LL Cool J became one of the pioneers of hip hop, with hits like “Going Back to Cali” and “Mama Said Knock You Out” setting the stage for other rappers to follow.
Then in 1987, he started a new tradition of the hip-hop love song with “I Need Love.”
His music career moved into film and then television, where he played Special Agent Sam Hanna on NCIS: Los Angeles for 14 seasons, and rarely set foot in a recording studio. “I thought the show would be over in two years,” he says. “I never expected NCIS to become as popular as it was. I’m very grateful. I had a great time. But I can’t be a part-time emcee. I can’t be a part-time musician. There’s no such thing.”
Now 56, LL Cool J is returning to what he loves most: rap. He recently released his first album in over a decade, “The Force,” which features appearances by Eminem and other rappers who grew up listening to his music.
Click on the embed below to stream LL COOL J’s album “The FORCE” (free Spotify subscription required to listen to the full album).
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.’ It’s easy to sit back and evaluate it and say, ‘That album was better than that album.’ But can you go into a room and paint on silence and then put it out into the world and let people enjoy it? Can you do that?”
LL COOL J says he still enjoys making music, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want people to take notice. “I love the idea that I’m talking to a hip-hop artist in his 40th year and his records are relevant and influential in the culture today,” he said.
“They were talking about it on the radio this morning,” Sanne said.
“I love it,” he laughs. “I love it. I love it. You know why? Not just for me, but for future generations. I love that they can think, ‘Yeah, I get to keep doing what I love.’ Right!”
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Story by Robbyn McFadden. Edited by Lauren Barnello.
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