- 10 · 2002
- Train for Speed (Mixed by Asafa Powell) · 2002
- All World: Greatest Hits · 1995
- All World 2 · 2002
- All World: Greatest Hits · 1987
- Todd Smith · 2005
- Mama Said Knock You Out · 1990
- Exit 13 (Bonus Tracks Version) · 2008
- The DEFinition · 2004
- Authentic · 2013
- Authentic · 2013
- Mama Said Knock You Out · 1990
- All World: Greatest Hits · 1995
Essential Albums
- The fourth album from LL Cool J is a head-knocking reboot for the battle-tested hip-hop veteran. Already a certified legend at 22 years old, he found new creative and commercial life by dedicating himself to the “future of the funk” on this triumphant 1990 LP: He’s no longer the bombastic teenager screaming over guitar stabs, but a technician finding the pocket in 14 Marley Marl co-productions. By the time the 1990s began, the most unflappable MC of the 1980s was experiencing a crisis of confidence. His 1989 album Walking With a Panther had underperformed commercially, and many fans took him to task for the album’s handful of love ballads. Hip-hop was changing: Cooler heads like Rakim and EPMD had prevailed over rap-rock shouters, Los Angeles reality rap was starting to take over New York ego flexes, and Kool Moe Dee and Ice T were calling for war. Lost and forlorn, LL Cool J retreated to his grandmother’s basement where the matriarch gave him some advice that changed the trajectory of his career: “Oh, baby, just knock them out!” Mama Said Knock You Out would bring that competitive drive to songs like the stormy title track, not to mention the absolutely venomous “To Da Break of Dawn”, a roaring response to Kool Moe Dee and Ice T’s threats. But LL is just getting started, as Mama Said finds him sinking his teeth into critics, rivals and doubters alike: “When I’m on the microphone I want silence,” he insists on “Murdergram”. “Let KRS-One stop the violence.” The verses on Mama Said are brutal and efficient—and Marley Marl’s neck-snapping production is just as raw, built on classic breakbeats like James Brown’s “Funky Drummer” and The Honeydrippers’ “Impeach the President”. Even pop-friendly singles like “Around the Way Girl” and “Jingling Baby (Remixed but Still Jingling)” crackle with vinyl noise. Whether pitching woo or going for the jugular, LL Cool J’s charisma has never been higher than this moment, cementing his legacy not only as the Mike Tyson of microphone jousts, but as a commercial titan who would persevere as hip-hop rapidly evolved its styles and sounds.
Albums
- 2006
- 2004
- 2004
- 2002
- 1997
Artist Playlists
- Knock-you-out rhymes from the MC they call the G.O.A.T.
- His rawest, most aggressive raps and his sexiest slow jams.
More To Hear
- LL COOL J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” gets unplugged.
- Lowkey takes listeners back to the beginning in Queensbridge.
- Strombo plays music from Alison Mosshart, LL Cool J, and more.
- The iconic MC talks “Mama Said Knock You Out” turning 30.
- The evolution and politics of Green Day.
- "Crushed Up" is the Beats 1 Banger, plus ALLBLACK & Kenny Beats.
- Q-Tip spins LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, and Slick Rick.
About LL COOL J
When Todd Smith was 11, his grandfather called him up to his attic in St. Albans, Queens, to give him a gift that would change his life: two turntables, two speakers, a mixer and a microphone. This was 1979: Smith—who later re-christened himself LL Cool J—was into The Sugarhill Gang, Afrika Bambaataa and Zulu Nation, the rudiments of hip-hop. Between his new tools and a restless imagination, he discovered his course. “I’m on the move. It’s 1765—no one knows that I escaped the plantation and built a spaceship and flew here. I can write that. Know what I mean?” he recalled in his 1998 memoir, I Make My Own Rules. “Through words, I could go wherever I thought to go.” Smith went on to become a pioneering figure in hip-hop, one of the first artists to re-frame the word-heavy vamps of early rap—where tracks could run for 10, 12, even 15 minutes—as pop music, steering hip-hop toward the mainstream at a time when it was still considered underground music. But more than an MC, LL was rap’s first pop star, conquering R&B (“I Need Love”, “Doin’ It”, “Around the Way Girl”), hosting the Grammys, working in film and television, becoming the kind of multi-faceted household name that set the precedent for artists like Drake, Will Smith and Eminem. After mailing around his demo tape in the early ’80s, Smith landed at a then-new label run out of an NYU dorm, called Def Jam, and released his first single, “I Need a Beat”, when he was 16. (The beat had been made on Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin’s drum machine by another teenage rapper, Adam Horovitz, a.k.a. Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys. Alongside T La Rock & Jazzy Jay’s “It’s Yours”, LL's and the Beastie Boys’ debuts were Def Jam’s firsts releases.) His star grew quickly: His first album, 1985’s Radio, helped crystallise the boxy, minimalistic sound of early rap, selling more than a half-million copies in its first six months—a presence that, alongside Run-DMC’s King of Rock, pushed rap into the mainstream. He broke ground again in 1987 with “I Need Love”, one of the first instances of rap being cross-pollinated with the vulnerability of R&B—a move that also helped cement him as hip-hop’s first real sex symbol. By 1990’s Mama Said Knock You Out, he’d become a pop-cultural icon; he was 22. His run continued, producing a series of albums—including 1995’s Mr. Smith, 2000’s G.O.A.T. and 2004’s The DEFinition—that kept pace with the stylistic times while continuing to develop his persona: smooth, confident, easygoing but never without a swaggering edge. Alongside fellow pioneers the Beasties, he helped prove that rappers weren’t just figures of a cultural zeitgeist but artists capable of forging long-term careers. In 2017, he became the first rapper in history to receive Kennedy Center Honors.
- HOMETOWN
- Bay Shore, NY, United States
- BORN
- 14 January 1968
- GENRE
- Hip-Hop/Rap