HOT 5 – HARDEST LL SONGS

5 Hardest LL Cool J Songs

It’s no secret that the ladies loved Cool J—but just as many dudes count him among the best. Young cats may judge him on post-millennium party cuts and that damn Diet Pepsi commercial (the wacknessss), but you and I know better. LL has managed an almost unmatched feat: remained (mostly) relevant in the rap game for more than 20 years. Say what you want about Walking With a Panther, that is some amazing ish… Cool J wears many crowns: Greatest Of All Time, Groan-inducing (not in a good way) Loverman MC, and Weird Food Referencer (“Floticious, skeevy, delicious,” “Pudding is delicious,” “Pink cookies in plastic bags, getting crushed by buildings,” and of course, the ever-tasty “Cool J cookies”). Perhaps forgotten is how straight-up hard his flow could be.  Here to remind you is this list of his five hardest-hitting songs.

I Can’t Live Without My Radio
We have to take you back to the beginning — well, almost the beginning. Although LL’s first true song was “I Need A Beat,” “I Can’t Live Without My Radio” was for many their first exposure to Cool J. Already a strong song, his cameo in Krush Groove just added to its hardness (see the clip below). LL and crew members E-Love and Cut Creator bumrush the offices of Krush Groove records. DMC, Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde, Rick Rubin, and everybody present try to kick him out; Jam Master Jay even threatens to pull a gun. None of this is a match for LL’s skill, which he shows and proves and gets signed on the spot. Of all his songs, I felt this one the most because at the time, I couldn’t live without my radio EITHER.

Rock the Bells
On that same album (Radio, for the headz who came late to the game), LL recorded what could be his theme song. From the first lines: “LL Cool J is hard as hell!!” backed by guitar scratches ripping up the track, “Rock the Bells” has always been a classic. According to Ego Trip’s Book of Rap Lists, Bells originally sounded so much like “Peter Piper” that Run screamed on LL until he switched up the sample. Voila, a hit was born.

Rock the bells (original)
The Bells again? You read right. It’s a track that stays hard no matter what you do to it. This was back in the day, when not just DJ’s but also regular people bought 12-inch singles (that seems so quaint now). Everyone who ran out and bought the 12-inch of “Rock the Bells” got this non-album cut on the B-side. But the only thing this version had in common with the original Bells was the title. It’s seven minutes of LL rapping over a live drummer, telling the world why he’s the best.
Trivia alert: This one song set off one of the earliest and most legendary beefs in hip hop. The beat the drummer plays sounds almost identical to the beat MC Shan uses on “Marley Scratch,” so MC Shan dropped “Beat Biter,” a diss record calling LL out. LL didn’t respond. But on the Beat Biter B-side, Shan and Marley Marl recorded a song telling the people where they were from: “The Bridge.” Well, some kids in the Bronx heard The Bridge and thought Shan made it sound like hip hop started in Queens, so THEY made a diss record. Those kids’ names, by the way, were Kris Parker and Scott Sterling, better known as KRS-ONE and DJ Scott La Rock.  Thus was born the war of words between the legendary Juice Crew (Marley Marl, Big Daddy Kane, Roxanne Shante and Biz Markie) and Boogie Down Productions. 

Jack the Ripper
When the original Old School rapper Kool Moe Dee dropped his 2nd album How Ya Like Me Now, the cover art included a jeep with a red Kangol squished beneath it. Even more explicit, in the liner notes Moe Dee printed a report card rating all the rappers out (a pretty audacious move even for now). Though Moe Dee had to give Cool J an “A,” LL got a mere 6 out of 10 for originality. The only other rappers with a score that low were the Beastie Boys. Plus, many felt Kool Moe Dee was talking to LL in the song “How Ya Like Me Now.” It took a minute, but LL swung back on the other side of “Going Back To Cali” with “Jack The Ripper.” LL gave him the business: Moe Dee was washed up, he wasn’t double platinum, what you got, etc., all to a funky beat. Throughout the song, Bobcat (LL’s other DJ) kept cutting up the line from the original Rock The Bells: “Jack the Ripper, King Hercules.” Kool Moe Dee tried to come back with “Let’s Go,” not a bad effort, but history gives the win to LL on this track

Mama Said Knock You Out
More than once, LL was on the brink, I mean right up to the very edge, of falling off and managed, somehow, to hang on and come back strong. The title track from his 4th album begins “Don’t call it comeback.” But really it was. Between his 2nd and 3rd albums, hip hop made a 360. A group named Public Enemy released arguably the greatest rap record of all time, It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, BDP released By All Means Necessary, and Big Daddy Kane dropped his 1st album. It was nation time: revolution, knowledge of self, 5 Percent, black nationalism, et al. So LL released Walk With a Panther, a weak, pandering mess with no less than three ballads on the album. It’s time to party for your right to fight, and LL’s licking his lips telling us what type of guy he is. All that just to say the future wasn’t looking too bright for one James Todd Smith. Enter Marley Marl. Marley had just left the Juice Crew and was a free agent so what do you get when you mix a legendary producer and a legendary rapper looking at the possible collapse of his career? A straight classic. The album Mama Said Knock You Out busted out of the box with three hit singles: “Boomin System,” “Around the Way Girl” and “Mama.”  The beat was hard, LL was raw and he left no doubt of what would happen if you stepped to him. Unfortunately, LL was never this hard again. Sure, he’s had tracks that had some roughness to them but none since then where you heard the hunger in his voice.

After reading this, some might get the impression that Grown Headz is really all the former members of the Cool J Fan Club. Not true. But when you consider that all of LL’s early contemporaries, such as Run-DMC, the Fatboys and Whodini, have all fallen off and in some cases died (RIP Jam Master Jay and Buff Love the Human BeatBox) and LL is still having hits and is one of the few rappers whom a Mom and daughter could both see and like in concert, you’ve gotta admit it’s pretty amazing — no matter how creepy you feel about the lip thing.

 Clip from Krush Groove that introduced LL to the world