246. LL Cool J, "Mama Said Knock You Out"

 


Two words for your Tuesday: Fuck and yes.  This album, which I have been listening to nonstop since last week, is a total blast of early 90's hip hop and fun and good times.  Does the very first track - "The Boomin' System" - sample James Brown's "Funky Drummer"?  You bet your ass it does.  Does this sound like the most spectacular exemplar of Golden Age hip hop?  Absolutely.

Hard to believe that at 22, LL was entering Act III of his career but, as he famously says in the title track, "Don't call it a comeback."  Produced largely by Marley Marl and recorded in New York, it's got the huge drums and scratcing and LL's booming tenor and everything else you remember from early Clinton-era hip hop.

OK OLD GUY ALERT HERE, as if it wasn't already completely apparent, but let's just compare a couple of verses.  Here's one from the title track:

Don't you call this a regular jam
I'm gonna rock this land
I'm gonna take this itty-bitty world by storm
And I'm just getting warm
Just like Muhammad Ali, they called him Cassius
Watch me bash this beat like a skull
Don'tcha know I had beef wit'
Why do you riff with me, a maniac psycho
And when I pull out my jammy, get ready 'cause it might go
Blauh! How ya like me now?

Sure, he references a gun and indirectly references violence - although he's bashing beats like a skull, not an actual skull - but anyway, I can't get over how incredibly tame this feels by modern standards.  There's not a single fuck in the whole thing!  Now I'm not gonna go "Back in my day rappers didn't have to say motherfucker everry line to get their point across" but someone other than me could do that.  

I swear, sonny, you have no idea.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Absolutely.

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