LL Cool J

James Todd Smith grew up in Hollis, Queens, one of the true birthplaces of hip-hop as a whole. His parents, James and Ondrea Smith, split up when he was four so from then on he lived with his grandparents. Smith grew up around music in all shapes and forms but it was hip-hop that truly captured his imagination, and he was writing his own raps and making his own mixtapes by the time he was nine. Fortunately his grandfather, a jazz saxophonist, was as supportive as it gets to the young Smith, and when his grandson was eleven years old, he got him $2,000 worth of kit to get him started, including his first set of turntables, an amplifier and a mixer.

Smith was already making mixtapes under the name LL Cool J, his nickname at school (which stands for Ladies Love Cool James, proving that he somehow went to a school where you could pick your own nickname), before he’d been given the equipment. Once he had it he was able to make these tapes to a nigh on professional level of quality and produce a number of them at a time, and he started sending them out to some of the nascent hip-hop labels around the Queens area. The label that signed Smith in the end was one that had been started the very same year by a producer called Rick Rubin and a manager and promotor called Russell Simmons. Its name? Def Jam Recordings.

Smith’s first single “I Need A Beat” was released the very same year, when Smith himself was barely 17 years old and it was a surprise hit, selling 100’000 copies in its first year. Along with the Beastie Boys’ first single “Rock Hard”, it was enough to get Def Jam a distribution deal with Columbia Records in 1985, effectively making the label just as much as the label made them. 1985 saw the release of his debut album “Radio”, which became an unprecedented hit in the hip-hop world of that time. It sold 500’000 copies in its first five months and continued to sell by the truckload, going platinum in 1989.

Smith also saw success on the singles chart as well, with both “I Can’t Live Without My Radio” and “Rock The Bells” colonising the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart around the same time. Smith was a star, and he, along with Run-DMC and label-mates The Beastie Boys were bringing Hip-Hop to the masses like no-one had ever done before. Ever since then, he’s been nothing if not a controversial figure within Hip-Hop and not always for the right reasons, as many have questioned the materialistic nature of some of his tracks, or feel like he focuses too much on his acting career and not the music.

The truth is, those people need to keep their mouth shut and remember just how revolutionary the likes of “Mama Said Knock You Out”, “I Need Love” and “Loungin’” were at the time of their release, and how much they still hold up to this day. Without LL Cool J, Hip-Hop would be a very, very different place, and for his influence, his skill at the mic, and his hand at giving the world Def Jam Recordings, he still comes highly recommended.