Rolling With LL Cool J: Legendary Rapper on ‘The FORCE,’ His Unreleased Album With Dr. Dre, Working With Michael Jackson and More

LL Cool J has been a G.O.A.T. for so long that it’s even the name of an album he released nearly 25 years ago. Other rappers came before him, and others have moved more units, but there is no other hip-hop artist who has been on top for as long as he has — he released his first single, “I Need a Beat,” 40 years ago — and still has the starpower to sell out arenas, be the featured player on a big-budget network television series, and close out Wednesday night’s MTV VMAs , a show he first played in 1991.

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Another all-time-great rapper, Nas, says, “LL entered the world of rap like he knew the crown would be his from day one. He is the consummate hardcore MC — a professional. He became the biggest in the game by the time ‘I’m Bad’ came out [in 1987]. LL winning meant the entire art form won — he paved the way for all of us.”

Busta Rhymes, who compares LL to a big brother, says, “L was the first to do a lot of things I didn’t see MCs doing before him. When I was in my early MC stage, he inspired me to rhyme the way I rhyme, from different flow patterns, to cadence, to having a real strong-man presence — ‘I’m coming through to bully shit as an MC on the mic!’ L’s always got that aggression when he’s on that stage or in the booth. He even inspired me to get in shape. He was a huge part of my inspiration.”

“I idolize him,” says Jadakiss.

LL has been on a tear in recent months. He released his first studio album in 11 years, “The FORCE” (standing for “Frequencies of Real Creative Energy”) on Sept. 6; he ripped the stage with Jadakiss and the Lox during their set at New York’s Terminal 5 last month; he made a surprise appearance with Busta, performing the “Flava in Ya Ear” during Bus’ opening set at the Brooklyn stop of Missy Elliott’s “Out Of This World” tour; and of course he and a galaxy of Def Jam Records legends closed out the VMAs to celebrate the label’s 40th anniversary.

“The moment felt full circle because it was an opportunity for me to do a timeless thing for multi generations,” he said of the performance. “The fact that I was the first artist to launch an album on the label and then to be doing it on that level of platform and to be launching new records and new music, it was a complete full circle moment. The sweetest part about it is I got to have my friends Public Enemy by my side. It was dope.”

“LL has always been that superstar,” foundational MC Rakim enthuses. “I remember when we first toured together [in the 1980s]. I’d be standing on the side of the stage and watching him kill the crowd every night. We were basically kids, but he took over the stage like he’d owned it forever. Nothing’s changed since then.”

He’s also one of the longest-running actors on television as well, with two hit series (“In The House” and “NCIS: Los Angeles”) under his belt — and that’s his second profession.

One afternoon in Los Angeles earlier this year, LL was in Los Angeles, surrounded by other hip-hop royalty who all share a distinction that very few MCs have experienced: They’re all members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, joining together for a song for the first time.

LL, class of 2021, was recording in the studio of his friend Dr. Dre (class of 2016 as part of N.W.A.). Manning the production duties in the session was Q-Tip (who will be inducted later this year with his colleagues in A Tribe Called Quest) and lending a guest verse was Eminem (class of 2022).

Q-Tip recalls Eminem saying to him at the session, “This is like a fucking dream, isn’t it, Tip?”

Although the three have been friends for years, Tip says it was still surreal for them to be in the lab with the rapper they watched on TV as kids. The two talked LL albums and rap bars before shifting focus to the day’s work. As the frenzied but funky beat for the track that would be dubbed “Murdergram Deux” blared from the speakers, Em shouted to Tip, “You are fucking crazy for this!,” before adding breakbeats and production touches to the song, as well as his surgically precise lyrics.

The video for the song finds both L and Em taking things back to their roots.

“We brought our first cars to the video,” LL recalled last week while cruising through Midtown Manhattan in a sprinter with his team. “Mine was my Audi 5000 — I bought it for $30,000 cash in ’86 — and it’s the same Audi that I stood on for the cover of my second album, “I’m Bad.” That was my first car — I had it in storage but shipped it out to Detroit on a flatbed [truck] and I stood on it in the new video. It felt fitting to bring that part of my life to the video, and for him to have his first car on the set too. It was definitely full circle and reciprocal, mutual love.”

LL had taken the album on a sort of preview tour, setting up private listening sessions for specially invited guests, including Questlove and Jermaine Dupri, but that didn’t really tell him how the world would react to it. On the night the album dropped, he turned in early but was unable to sleep. After the album arrived on streaming services, he checked the temperature on social media, and was happy to see the response was mostly positive.

“When I told people, ‘Yo, I wanna do a culturally relevant album’ in the midst of all these [younger artists], people looked at me like I had nine heads,” LL says. “They looked at me like I was a hydra — a hydra! —looking at me crazy like that, not because of any ill will, but just ‘How can you do that?’”

LL says the same confidence that allowed him to fulfill his dreams in the past also helped him counter any ageism he may face in hip-hop today.

“It’s like breaking the four-minute mile,” he says. “Nobody thought it could be broken until Roger Bannister did it, and then a lot of people started breaking it. Now you’ll see, when [‘The FORCE’] has success, you’re see people believing that they can make it happen, and it’s gonna extend the life of hip-hop in general.

“But if somebody doesn’t do it,” he continues, “If I don’t do Rock the Bells and [other] festivals and show that guys without records in the marketplace still can be relevant, and then if I don’t tell you that a guy who’s been out for a long time can make a new record and be relevant — if nobody does it, it never happens.”

L’s workday on September 6 started just a couple of hours after he checked the online reaction to the album, with a 4 a.m. call time for “The Today Show.” He performed a medley of his hits on the show, along with “The FORCE”’s lead cut, “Saturday Night Special,” with fellow New York rap vet Fat Joe. By 4 p.m., he will have signed well over a hundred items at an in-store appearance a few floors down from the NBC studios at the Rough Trade record store in Rockefeller Center (mostly vinyl and CD copies of the new album, but also a large pizza box and few other miscellaneous items; taken dozens of photos with fans (including one who wore a Michael Myers mask as homage to L’s role in “Halloween: H20”); and obliged requests for a couple of superfans to jump on Facetimes and phone calls. Among the gifts he received: a child’s drawing and two giant balls of mozzarella cheese. As he and his team moved from the store onto the busy streets around Rockefeller Center, he did not decline a single photo request from fans rushing up to him.

“In all of my career of working with recording artists, I’ve never worked with anybody that was more committed to the process,” says Eric Nicks, LL’s longtime friend, former A&R at Violator Records and now a member of his management team. “This is a guy who once flew from L.A. to New York and went straight into a room and answered questions from over 300 reporters from around the world, did it with grace and was friendly to all of them. Then he left the hotel, ran around Central Park twice — because he’s focused on staying in shape — and then we flew back to L.A. and went back to the movie set. I’ve never seen anyone with that level of dedication.”

He was just as committed to making sure “The FORCE” met a high standard.

“I wanted to make an impact and do something that I loved,” he says, multitasking an interview with a lunch break. at the midtown restaurant Avar. He began recording at the L.A. studios of Dr. Dre, who gave LL’s Rock Hall of Fame induction speech three years ago. Not too long after, the two began recording dozens of songs for what was intended to be a dream-team LP: an album from the original G.O.A.T. produced entirely by the West Coast’s emperor of beats.

However, LL felt that his raps weren’t up to par, and even though the album was a rare production by Dre, he knew he couldn’t release it.

“That would have meant I would have more confidence in him than I have in myself when it needs to be equal,” he says now. “He deserves a better LL than that. For me to go in there and not give Dr. Dre the best possible LL, it’s not fair to him and it’s definitely not fair to me, because it means I’m not taking advantage of the opportunity.

“We both knew it wasn’t there,” he stresses. “The sonics were there, but I gotta deliver on the writing. I’m not putting nothing out if I don’t feel it’s right.”

And if that seems like a high standard, well, he hasn’t released the songs he recorded with Michael Jackson either.

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“Me and Michael Jackson went to the studio man,” LL confirms — and also confirms that it is MJ’s sampled voice on “The FORCE”’s title track. He adds that his song “I’m Bad” came out before Jackson’s “Bad.”

“[Former Def Jam chief] Russell [Simmons] played my record for him and Quincy [Jones], and they got inspired,” he says. “That’s OK. That’s what art is. Mike showed a lot of love to me in general, and definitely to hip-hop. Let’s be clear: For me, he’s the king. I’m a Michael Jackson fan, B. His talent speaks for itself.”

With his Dre album in limbo — the two decided, with no hard feelings, to take a break and let things play out — LL restarted “The FORCE” from scratch. His inspiration came from an unexpected place.

His friend, the late Phife Dawg from A Tribe Called Quest, came to him in a dream and sarcastically asked how the Dre project was turning out.

“That is a real thing,” he stresses, his smile widening. “That is not hype. I really had a dream about this dude.”

LL took the dream as a sign and followed up on it: The very next day he called Phife’s Tribe partner, Q-Tip, who he and many others consider one of the greatest producers of all-time. Tip picked up on the first ring.

“That’s LL!,” Q-tip explains. “There’s certain dudes: Rakim, [Slick] Rick, [Big Daddy] Kane, LL. If they’re hittin’ you up, you gotta be all ears. He told me about the dream and I was like, ‘Well, what you want to do?”

“I want to make an album, B,” L told him.

“Let’s go,” Tip responded.

It was important for both, if they were going to make an entire album together, to actually make it together in the lab, rather than sending files back and forth. LL would go to Q-Tip’s home studio and write rhymes while Tip devised their musical backdrops. LL was open to being coached or critiqued if needed; Tip was open to any sonic experimentation LL wanted to try.

“We were in the lab and we were cooking right there,” Tip recalls. “The vibe was great. You get to work with one of your heroes.”

LL was determined not to have another situation like the one with Dre. He says he practically had to “relearn how to rap,” tapping into a higher level of MCing. No matter how well it had worked in the past, the traditional LL album, spangled with party anthems and songs dedicated to the ladies along with some hardcore hip-hop, wouldn’t be the endgame.

“I didn’t want to make a collection of singles,” LL says. “That didn’t interest me.”

The end result is diverse, substantive, and unique from anything else in LL’s career.

“This is one of L’s best albums ever,” Busta, who appears on “Huey In The Chair,” affirms. “His catalog is crazy, but this album, it’s screaming to me. Every box is checked off for what it takes to have a classic body of work.”

“Spirit of Cyrus,” which features Snoop Dogg on the hook, starts the album off. A fictional narrative, it takes the listener into the psyche of mass murder targeting who he feels are racist police officers. It was inspired by the real life story of former LAPD officer Christopher Dorner: In 2013, Dorner shot and killed four people — mostly police — and wounded three others. He ultimately took his own life after a shootout with authorities in San Bernardino. During the manhunt for Dorner, LL was warned by some of his friends in law enforcement not to leave the house because of the eerie resemblance between himself and Dorden. Police had instructions to shoot to kill Dorner.

Also on the album, Rick Ross and Fat Joe were enlisted for “Saturday Night Special,” which focuses on men maintaining integrity and abiding by unwritten laws of conduct. “Black Code” is an unbridled celebration of African American culture, from the food to the swag to the people’s spirit to overcome obstacles (it even mentions hairweaves). “Proclivities” with Saweetie is a playful romp, while “Praise Him,” the first-ever collaboration between LL and Nas, is powered by Q-Tip’s Tribe-al backdrop.

The record is named after an iconic photo of Black Panthers leader Huey P. Newton, and pays homage, in part, to LL’s aunt Joan who was the first female in the Panther party. It delves into the influence of Five Percent Nation and expresses L’s feelings of pride as a Black man.

“The vibe is Red, Black and Green,” Q-Tip says on the chorus.

“To get nine different hot producers and make a collection of singles — what does that mean?” LL asks rhetorically. “There’s two types of music: trendy bops and spirit music. Trendy bops come and go. It’s not that you can’t make nine pieces of spirit music with nine different producers. But it’s easier to make a cohesive thing when you work with somebody and you connect. Me and Tip was able to go in there and do what we do.”

Havoc from Mobb Deep, a legendary producer in his own right, says, “When I heard LL and Q-Tip were working together, I got just as excited as I was when I heard LL was making an album produced by Marley Marl,” he enthuses, referencing LL’s 1990 classic “Mama Said Knock You Out.” “I know LL does really well with one-producer albums — not that he doesn’t do good when its various producers, but when its one, he really gels with that producer.”

“The music sounds beautiful,” Jadakiss says. “Q-Tip, he’s one of them golden gems that don’t get enough recognition. Of course we know Tribe are the greats that they are, but Tip should get some more credit too. Tip is damn near our Quincy Jones. He’s a genius.”

As for what LL’s dream visitor, his and Q-Tip’s late brother in arms, would think of the album, LL says, “Phife would love this record man. He’d be rapping on this joint — Phife would have killed ‘Proclivities’! He would have been all over that joint.”

“The FORCE” has energized LL so much, he’s already thinking about a follow-up. We may hear his album with Dr. Dre after all.

“There’s a lot of potential there,” he says. “I probably could go in and retool those songs, and you would be like ‘Wow.’”

Variety will have part 2 of this article, where we join LL for a visit to his home neighborhood in Queens, next week.

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