When LL Cool J famously snarled “Don’t call it a comeback” on “Mama Said Knock You Out,” the triumphant title monitor of his milestone 1990 album of the identical identify, his indignation was comprehensible. In spite of everything, James Todd Smith was one in all rap’s premiere celebrity soloists – a charismatic rhyme prodigy who’d buoyed a fledgling Def Jam Data as its teenaged flagship artist, broke new floor as a uniquely dual-skilled battle lyricist/balladeer, and had simply come off his third consecutive smash LP with the platinum-certified Strolling With a Panther. But the yr prior, LL’s profession was inarguably additionally in disaster.
Business success however, Panther was tone-deaf when it got here to his core viewers. Its again cowl introduced him flanked by a cadre of champagne bottle-coddling fashions at a second when hip-hop was emphasizing activism and advanced character. A misguided lead single, “I’m That Type of Guy,” belittled and taunted his male listeners by reciting all of the methods wherein LL was infinitely cooler than they had been. Kool Moe Dee, Ice-T, and even MC Hammer all critiqued him on file. However the nadir was September 17, 1989. Showing at a Cease the Racism rally and live performance on one hundred and twenty fifth Avenue in Harlem alongside Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, and Doug E. Recent – an occasion organized in response to the racially motivated homicide of a Black youth in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn – LL was unceremoniously booed. As Billboard journal reported, “According to young people in the audience, LL’s politics – which oft-times seem to promote self over community issues – are no longer acceptable.”
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Not everybody believed the criticism was warranted – notably revered producer and radio host Marley Marl (himself a former goal of fickle hip-hop public opinion through the notorious Bridge-BDP feud). Championing Panther’s rawest cuts on his common NYC combine present, Marley wooed LL into providing him a remix alternative. The ensuing “Jingling Baby (Remixed But Still Jingling)” revamped the monitor with simply the fitting contact of celebration time bounce, and impressed L to re-voice his lyrics in a rejuvenating efficiency that sounded conspicuously like, sure, a comeback. Most importantly, a profitable inventive partnership was inaugurated.
Galvanized by Marley’s vibrant manufacturing, Mama Mentioned Knock You Out bolsters LL with a sonic continuity unheard since his early work with Rick Rubin, and revitalizes him as an distinctive expertise who’s additionally, crucially, as soon as once more relatable. A paean to the everyman joys of driving round blasting music (and unofficial sequel to his breakout single “I Can’t Live Without My Radio”), “Boomin’ System” rides an irresistible sampled merging of James Brown’s “The Payback” and En Vogue’s then-current R&B hit “Hold On” that greater than satisfies the low-end joys extolled throughout the tune. Its narrative rejoinder, “Illegal Search” addresses police harassment in essentially the most biting commentary of L’s oeuvre (“I call it nice, you call it a ‘drug car’/ I say ‘disco,’ you call it a ‘drug bar’/ I say ‘nice guy,’ you call me Mr. Good Bar/ I make progress, you say ‘not that far’”). “Around the Way Girl” rejects Panther’s fashions and affectionately celebrates the charms and sass of “a girl with extensions in her hair/ Bamboo earrings at least two pair” over a consummate R&B/hip-hop synthesis that musically outpaces all his previous romantic materials.
And if L’s pure rhyme showcases are reliably spectacular (e.g. the thundering title monitor; a jubilant train in cadence and wordplay, “Eat Em Up L Chill”; the savage Moe Dee/Ice-T/Hammer diss-fest “To Da Break of Dawn”), it’s a self-deprecating deep reduce, “Cheesy Rat Blues,” on which his pen proves most mighty. A hilariously exaggerated account of LL’s fall from grace, it chronicles the fleeting nature of fame and hangers on (“Everybody laughing at my corny jokes/ I was stupid, I thought that they were sincere folks”) to turning into the butt of his personal punchlines (“I feel like tyin’ a anchor to my ankle and jumpin’ right in the ocean/ ‘Cause I’m ashy and I can’t afford lotion”). By tune’s finish a determined and destitute L is smashing windshields for free change, robbing youngsters for tricycles, and making off with milkshakes from the native drive through. “I’m the man that they’re laughin’ at,” he says on the chorus. However, in acknowledging his real-life struggles to achieve new ranges of creativity, LL in the end enjoys the final giggle.
Hearken to LL Cool J’s Mama Mentioned Knock You Out now.
In celebration of hip-hop’s fiftieth anniversary, uDiscover Music is publishing 50 album critiques all through 2023 that spotlight the breadth and depth of the style. The Hip-Hop 50 emblem was designed by Eric Haze, the thoughts behind iconic graphics for EPMD and LL Cool J.
