We All Missed LL Cool J’s Comeback, but “30 Decembers” Fills Us In

LL Cool J’s “30 Decembers” is a play-by-play recap of the rap icon’s incognito return to public life in 2020. That’s right, dear reader: we all missed LL Cool J’s comeback (we know, we know, he said not to call it that) back when we were busy quarantining, sheltering in place, and stockpiling sanitizer.

Luckily, we don’t have to do much deep diving into the past to find out what he was up to. The eighth track off the rapper’s September 2024 release The FORCE explains it all.

LL Cool J’s “30 Decembers” and His Hometown Return

While most of us were finding reasons not to go out in public during the latter half of 2020, LL Cool J seized the opportunity to do the opposite. In a September 2024 interview with NPR, the rapper revealed that he returned to his hometown without anyone knowing. (So, no, if you happened to see a man who looked like LL Cool J walking around New York City in December 2020, you’re not crazy.)

“During the pandemic, I got an opportunity because of all the masks and restrictions,” the rapper told NPR host A Martínez. “I took it as an opportunity to just anonymously travel throughout New York City. For me, that was amazing because I would travel on the subway by myself—alone.”

“I was everywhere, man,” he continued. “From Marcy to pink houses from all up in the Bronx. I was just running all over the city because you can’t create art for people that you can’t relate to. When you’re trying to write songs that really connect with people, you’ve got to be able to relate.”

A Time Traveler’s Perspective

LL Cool J might’ve grown up in Queens, but after becoming a Grammy Award-winning artist with iconic hits like “Mama Said Knock You Out” and “Going Back to Cali,” he lost the ability to walk through the streets of his native New York City without a throng of adoring fans swarming him decades ago. In “30 Decembers,” we get an up-close and personal look at what that return felt like.

I came up off the street, took some p***y steps up to the belly of the beast, he begins. Which way I go? Kinda confusin’, the machines are not workin’. There ain’t no tokens or nothin’, this s*** done changed all of a sudden. LL Cool J was running around the streets of New York City as a kid in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and it shows in how he perceives the city now. It’s like I died and came back, different faces and ages, on their phones and computers, no one is readin’ the papers.

The rest of “30 Decembers” follows LL Cool J’s journey through different New York neighborhoods, his conversations with people, and his perception of the ever-changing world around him. And as unsettling as it sounds like it was for the musical icon, it’s what he needed to write the song.

“One of the things you forget about is the danger,” LL Cool J told NPR. “You forget about real things happening to real people on a daily basis. You could get lost in this little upscale bubble. Everything I documented in that song was real.”

Photo by Nancy Kaszerman/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock