Within the menagerie of terrible are only shards of transcendence. That pursuit is, with few exceptions, a horrible idea.
Rappers are rock stars who don’t need to make rock albums. Rebirth stands as Wayne’s worst project, but his maligned rock album is increasingly looking ahead of its time, and just might be Weezy’s most impactful project, if you look at the generation currently following in his footsteps. Lil Wayne’s best album is Tha Carter II, his biggest is Tha Carter III, and his creative peaks are Da Drought 3 or Dedication 2, depending on the day and time. In the middle of this road is Lil Wayne’s 2009 reinvention, Rebirth. It’s often a winding road trip through a misguided wasteland of artistic ambitions gone awry. Now, unexpectedly, it’s happening to Lil Wayne. It happened to Kanye, whose 808s & Heartbreak, while beloved by a vocal minority, is rarely considered his best. Sometimes your worst album, improbably, becomes your most influential. LL Cool J wasn’t the first rapper who wanted to be a pop star, but he was the first titan of the genre to comport himself like one.Sometimes your biggest album isn’t your best album. Mama Said Knock You Out nods at God-fearers, boombox-carriers, battle-rap diehards, and yes, women, whom he loved every bit in return. Canibus would permanently deflate LL’s rep as a not-terribly-serious rapper with questionable longevity due to the fact “99% of his fans wear high heels” but his masterpiece hardly feels like a batch of compromises for any one demographic. But this was the beginning of the rap blockbuster, a hard-pop album that tried to please everyone and intimidate them at the same time by throwing down a gauntlet for the competition. The whole thing is a bit sparse for a smash, it’s no Thriller or Can’t Slow Down, it doesn’t sound terribly expensive, and other than star producer Marley Marl, it’s not a guest-loaded affair. Which is not to say that a full-of-himself stud isn’t at his best beating his chest on the savagely delivered “Mama Said Knock You Out” biting down every syllable hard and reaffirming his status on top of his world. VIDEO: LL Cool J “Mama Said Knock You Out” With its gospel-flavored “keep on searchin’” refrain and organ hook, LL Cool J’s greatest deep cut bounced with a densely sampled soulfulness in fuller melodic contrast to the rest of the often starkly satisfying album. And on the album’s very peak, a pretty shallow and full-of-himself stud finds his political consciousness as he endures an “Illegal Search” that preceded Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” indirectly (and Kanye’s “Cold” directly). To anyone who thinks he can’t be self-deprecating, he offers “I rode the back of the bus but my grip kept on slipping” on “Cheesy Rat Blues,” which also introduced the world to the phrase “run the jewels,” if that rings a bell. “Milky Cereal” predated Lil Wayne’s horny wordplay by arranging dozens of household breakfast cereal names into a tale with Slick Rick’s eye. “Around the Way Girl” and “6 Minutes of Pleasure” had a tenderness that wasn’t self-centered like “I Need Love” for maximum commercial appeal or else Drake may have been invented sooner. It helps that it was stronger than the first one obnoxiously charming singles like “I’m Bad” and “Big Ole Butt” and “I Need a Beat” made a larger-than-life personality and rewarded it with money and fame, but LL Cool J’s fourth album made him a thoughtful and well-rounded musician.įor one thing - though many of the best songs (“Eat Em Up L Chill,” the title tune) are - it wasn’t all boasts. Along with possibly AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, Mama Said Knock You Out was the first hip-hop album to successfully give a rap career a second act. But in a pre-internet hip-hop world, the pace was set by its first superstar at 14 years old, and after inventing the hip-hop ballad (“I Need Love”) among other things, he was supposed to be over, and a portion of his audience assumed hip-hop might be soon too. I mean the towering title stunner addresses it head-on: “Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years.” LL Cool J hadn’t been anywhere for years he was, like, 20. Mama Said Knock You Out invented the hip-hop comeback album, everyone knows that. Mama Said Knock You Out turns 30 (Art: Ron Hart)
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