LL Cool J & Beastie Boys Still True to Form

[DudeAsInCool]

Two Hip-Hop Pioneers, Still True to Form

By KELEFA SANNEH

Published: October 11, 2004

In the mid-1980's, the pioneering record label Def Jam minted two of hip-hop's first mainstream stars. LL Cool J was a futuristic b-boy playing the role of an old-fashioned sex symbol. (Or was it the other way around?) And the Beastie Boys were an old-fashioned punk-rock band dressed up as a new kind of rap group. (Or, once again, the other way around.)

Read the full article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/arts/mus...note.html?8hpib

[method77]

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[DudeAsInCool]

the article requires registration. I hate registering without a reason

Beatfactory set up an account for Beatking members..pm him for details...or read the rest here:

For LL Cool J, popularity was its own reward: the rapper became a hitmaker became an actor became an all-around celebrity; hip-hop was a ticket into the mainstream. But for the Beastie Boys, popularity was a necessary evil: after a wildly successful debut album, the trio retreated into its own carefully curated universe; hip-hop was a ticket out of the mainstream.

But both found ways to survive: these are the only acts from the era that still sell millions of records and headline big halls. And last week both came to town, for two very different concerts. On Thursday night, LL Cool J played Radio City Music Hall, rolling onstage in a low red Ferrari and delivering some brand-name lyrics: "I'm-a drop that Phantom on you baby, watch/Roberto Cavalli in the Denali, am I hot?"

And on Saturday night, the Beastie Boys played Madison Square Garden, ambling onstage in matching warm-up suits, with MCA kicking a rhyme that was less Roberto Cavalli than Ralph Nader: "I'm a spacializer, rhyme reviser/Ain't selling out to advertisers."

The new Beastie Boys CD is "To the 5 Boroughs" (Capitol), a loosely organized tribute to New York City. This is an insular album, produced by the Boys themselves, who stitched together an appealing series of trebly, squelchy beats that update (slightly) the sound of 1980's electro. But the album also includes some of the worst Beastie Boys songs so far, and it was responsible for most of Saturday's low points. "Right Right Now Now" was one of them: a hackneyed, flat-footed protest rap, with the members chanting, "We gotta get it going on/Before it's too far gone/We gotta work together, it's been too long."

The new LL Cool J album is "The DEFinition" (Island Def Jam). Six of the disc's 11 tracks were produced by Timbaland, hip-hop's most inventive beatmaker, who gives the rapper a series of rubbery, squiggly rhythms to bounce rhymes against. LL has never had anything in particular to say, but he knows that a propulsive track and an appealing voice can bring even the rotest boast to life. And unlike the Beastie Boys, he sees no shame in collaborating with whoever's hot: one of the album's best songs is "I'm About to Get Her," an at-the-club duet with R. Kelly.

Both acts seemed to view hip-hop as some mutant form of athletics. But whereas LL Cool J prowled the stage alone, like a star player, the Beastie Boys worked like a scrappy pick-up team, throwing rhymes back and forth, adjusting one another's outfits and paying tribute to their D.J., Mixmaster Mike. In the years since their brash debut, the Beastie Boys have redefined themselves as hip-hop's most humble group, so instead of praising themselves, they praise their D.J.

Throughout the 1990's, the Beastie Boys went out of their way to disavow the rowdy lechery that used to be their trademark: a group that once performed alongside women in cages became a group that condemned "disrespect to women." And yet the Beastie Boys still inhabit a boys-oriented universe: their songs evoke the era before rappers learned how to write love songs, and their concerts still rely on a cleaned-up variant of the old, just-us-guys camaraderie.

Saturday's show was one of the only hip-hop shows where the "homeboys" make more noise than the "ladies."

It's just the opposite for LL Cool J, who built his target demographic right into his stage name, which stands for "Ladies Love Cool James." He wrote one of the first-ever hip-hop ballads, "I Need Love," and he knows that female fans still pay his bills; there was a huge cheer for his brilliant, slithery old slow jam, "Hey Lover" (with Boyz II Men) and for his delicious new thug-love ballad, "Hush." Maybe men love to laugh at his wildly outdated posing: his exaggerated lip-licking, his irony-free flexing, his oops-I-missed-my mouth water-bottle routine. But at an LL Cool J show, men are little more than chaperones, and if any women objected to his throwing-out-roses routine, they didn't show it.

The Beastie Boys' strategy is easy to admire: their act (in which tag-team rhyme sessions alternated with full-band jams) is good-natured, energetic and slightly off-kilter. For them, hip-hop means doing exactly what you want: they screened a videotaped request from Chris Rock for the 1986 classics "Slow and Low" and "Girls," then pointedly declined to fulfill it.

LL Cool J carries on a different - but just as noble - hip-hop tradition. One of his most famous lines is, "Don't call it a comeback," and his career has been driven by a sometimes-frantic determination to stay near the top of the heap. He looked oddly vulnerable on that Radio City Music Hall stage, shirtless and breathing hard, all too aware that the sound of those screaming women was the only thing holding him up.