MARLEY MARL ON WHY LL COOL J'S MOST FAMOUS ALBUM ALMOST NEVER HAPPENED

[JumpinJack AJ]

Why LL Cool J’s Most Famous Album Almost Never Happened

 

LL Cool J in 1990.

By Raymond Boyd/Getty Images.

Twenty-five years after its release, V.F. takes a look into how one of hip-hop’s classic albums came together.

by

• Katherine LaGrave

August of 1990 was unseasonably warm. The hottest month in one of the city’s hottest years in history, ever, it was a fitting climate for the release of one of hip-hop’s greatest albums.

LL Cool J, née James Todd Smith, began releasing albums in 1985 after connecting with Def Jam: his first, Radio, went platinum. The year 1987 came, and he released Bigger and Deffer. All looked promising for LL Cool J’s much-anticipated third release, 1989’s Walking with a Panther.

Though a commercial success (see “Going Back to Cali,” “Big Ole Butt” for favorites), the album was lauded by many critics as too poppy, and lacking in substance. The LL Cool J that dominated the first two albums by “rhymin’ and designin’ with your girl in my lap” now fell flat with promises that seemed, well, repetitive. “With so much happening outside of the recording studio and on the streets,” wrote David Browne in Rolling Stone, “is being the boaster with the mostest enough?”

One year later, LL Cool J released Mama Said Knock You Out, regarded by many as his magnum opus. It was a booming, layered response to those who felt he had begun his slide into oblivion. Though “Mama” is used in the album’s title, it was actually LL’s grandmother who gave him the directive to knock out his critics. To date, the album has sold more than 2 million copies and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album also garnered LL Cool J the 1991 Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance.

Marley Marl, the album’s producer and one of the industry’s most venerable beatmakers, takes us back 25 years.

How it all began.

Marl, a D.J. at WBLS, invited LL Cool J to the station to promote Walking with a Panther. Once there, Marl told him how much he liked “Jingling Baby,” a track on the album, and expressed his interest in remixing it. LL agreed, but wanted to redo his vocals.

“Next thing you know, we started making other tracks,” says Marl. “We didn’t know where we were going with it. It became the Mama Said Knock You Out LP, but we were just making random tracks . . . going to the clubs . . . after we went to the clubs, going home and trying to capture the same feeling in the studio with the music. All of a sudden, we’re, like, eight tracks in, and I didn’t even have a contract to do an album with him. We were just grooving. After we were in the studio and we felt each other, we just kept it moving.”

The art of experimentation.

To this day, one of the hallmarks of the album is its rich selection of sample-based compositions—a novelty at the time. “Mama Said Knock You Out” alone samples James Brown’s “Funky Drummer,” the Chicago Gangsters’s “Gangster Boogie,” Sly & The Family Stone’s “Trip to Your Heart” and “Sing a Simple Song,” and LL Cool J’s own “Rock the Bells.” Much of the album, says Marl, came from simply listening—and one song’s line even birthed an entirely new song.

“You know what was incredible to me? He [LL] said it on ‘Cheesy Rat Blues.’ He said, ‘Cars ride by with the boomin’ system.’ And when he said that, I was like, ‘That’s the title for a song.’ So I sampled him saying that and we made ‘The Boomin’ System.’ A lot of it was experimental. About 80 percent.”

 

What most people don’t know about the album.

That it was never supposed to have happened. “Me and LL had . . . we had, like, semi-beef from the MC Shan era. So at first we weren’t really getting along. I was down with the Juice Crew, and he was down with the Def Jam crew, so it was almost like a friendly rivalry going on,” says Marl. “I guess he was astonished that I would even tell him to come to the radio station and promote his album. But that was the first time we ever really, really connected right there. It was something we just conceptually ran in the studio and started making tracks together and building good tracks.”

A big mistake.

The beginning of “Mama Said Knock You Out,” where LL Cool J calls out, “Come on, man,” might seem like a battle cry, but it was actually never even supposed to be on the song. “He was screaming at the engineer,” says Marl. “He was yelling at him, because he kept messing up all night. So he was like, ‘Come on, man!’ And the engineer was actually recording vocals, and then the beat dropped. And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s classic.’”

Why the album is significant.

“It just showed another side of LL. It showed his growth, too. You gotta think—he was actually growing up at that time,” says Marl, pointing out that LL was in his early 20s when working on the album, and just 22 when it was released. “He was rhyming over some hard tracks. His other tracks were hard, too, but this had a little street element to it this time. A little dirt. A little Queensbridge dirt was sprinkled on it, you know. It’s one of the albums that helped shape the direction of where rap and everything was going at that time.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/ll-cool-j-mama-said-knock-you-out-marley-marl-interview?mbid=social_facebook

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JumpinJack AJ]

 

 

 

 

[JumpinJack AJ]

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=310IIjYdjxE

 

[bigted]

besides JJFP's He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper and a few others from my other favorite hip hop artists this album is one of my all time favorites to be the greatest ever, good stuff AJ!

EDIT: I know most people got this album on CD but if anybody don't I don't know what they're waiting for, this is the ultimate hip hop history lesson, for all you young heads check out the album

Edited August 23, 2015 by bigted