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LL Cool J Relearns “How to Rap” on His First Album in 11 Years, “The FORCE”
NEW YORK (AP) — Grammy Award-winning rapper, actor and writer LL Cool J will release his first recent album in 11 years, “The FORCE,” in September — 40 years after launching his hip-hop profession.
Not that he wasn’t making music during that point. “I was always tinkering in the studio here and there,” he told The Associated Press via Zoom. But in the past two years, inspiration really struck. He began working with a producer and taking music more seriously.
Then he hit a snag. “I just felt like the songs this producer was giving me were better than the songs I was writing,” he says. Then the late Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest got here to him in a dream. “He said, ‘Hey, man, this new music you’re working on is great, man.’ But he had this Cheshire cat look on his face, like he was lying to me,” he says.
It was a wake-up call—and something told him to call A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip to work together. The move worked: Q-Tip produced every song and created all of the beats on “The FORCE,” out Sept. 6.
LL Cool J describes the strategy of creating his 14th studio album as “going back to the drawing board and learning how to rap again…making sure I’m really inspired by what I’m saying. That’s why there’s not a lot of bullshit on this album.”
“The LeBrons, the Stephs, the Jordans, the Kobes, they all go back to the drawing board, always trying to be better,” he continued. “I wasn’t trying to be trendy, and I wasn’t trying to recapture anything I had done before.”
The FORCE is an inventive rap album inspired by LL Cool J’s storied profession, touching on quite a lot of topics reminiscent of the facility of self-motivation (“Passion”), temperamental style (“Murdergram Deux,” the long-awaited collaboration with Eminem), dangerous sensuality at work (“Proclivities” featuring Saweetie) and cautionary tales, as seen in the lead single “Saturday Night Special” featuring Rick Ross and Fat Joe.
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Particularly effective is the one-two punch of “Huey in the Chair” — a nod to the famous photo of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton — which the rapper describes as “taking a stand for what you believe in,” and the funky, urban beats of “Basquiat Energy,” celebrating the modern spirit of the artist who named him. The rapper says the American icons are united by their ability to “express their personal truths,” which is what he set out to do on this album.
Thus, “The FORCE,” which stands for “the frequencies of true creative energy,” became the unofficial mantra of the label.
“That’s what we wanted to present to the world,” he said. (*11*)
And after hip-hop’s fiftieth anniversary last 12 months, LL Cool J says he “wanted to show people that artists who have had long, successful careers, so to speak, can make modern contributions to hip-hop that have a big impact. I’d never seen anything like that before. That was another challenge: Can I make something that sounds modern and fresh?”
There’s no trendiness here — expect to hear rappers rapping for real — but nobody should consider this as a nostalgia play. The album is jam-packed with guests, even beyond Ross, Fat Joe, Saweetie, and Eminem: Snoop Dogg, Sona Jobareth, Busta Rhymes, Nas, Mad Squablz, JS.AND, and Don Pablito are amongst them.
“One thing I wanted to do was meet people where I am now. I wasn’t trying to be a preacher,” he said. “I’m not trying to tell people how to live their lives necessarily. I wanted to express myself to people where I am artistically at this point in my life and give it to them. And then they can take it and do whatever they want with it.”
“The FORCE” album track list:
- “Spirit of Cyrus” (featuring Snoop Dogg)
- “Force”
- “Saturday Night Special” (feat. Rick Ross and Fat Joe)
- “Black Code Suite” (feat. Sona Jobarteh)
- “Passion”
- “Tendencies” (feat. Saweetie)
- “Postmodern”
- “December 30th”
- “Run back”
- “Huey In Da Chair” (featuring Busta Rhymes)
- “Basquiat’s Energy”
- “Praise Him” (feat. Nas)
- “Murdergram Deux” (featuring Eminem)
- “The Vow” (featuring Mad Squablz, JS.AND and Don Pablito)