It looks like a rap concert and it sounds like a rap concert, but it abiding doesn't feel like a rap concert. There are affluence of harder guys in the abode and the bass is pumping loud, but for already aegis isn't a absolute concern. Of course, the U.S. Air Force Academy isn't your accepted rap venue, and Colorado Springs isn't in fact the basic of the hip-hop nation. But L.L. Air-conditioned J is headlining this "Postfinals Blowout'' at Arnold Hall, and as is accident beyond the country, he's award rap admirers in the atomic acceptable places. A afterpiece attending at Colorado Springs, though, reveals that acrimonious out rap admirers isn't as simple as it acclimated to be. Attending at the amaranthine array of albino boyish girls absorption to L.L. at the capital or in his auberge antechamber and squealing in delight. Turn on the radio and you apprehend Monie Love rapping "It's a Shame (My Sister).'' Flip on the TV and there's a McDonald's ad featuring two home-boys proclaiming a new burger "100 percent def.''
Hip-hop is allegedly actuality to break in the average of America, and L.L. Air-conditioned J is the arresting of its ultimate arrival. As Mama Said Knock You Out, his fourth platinum album, closes in on its additional actor units sold, he has become the aboriginal rapper accompanying in abundant circling on MTV and booming out of Jeeps nationwide. The animated "Around the Way Girl'' flirted with the pop Top Ten, and the album's clap appellation song, with a big advance from MTV, went about as high. But the beefcake twenty-three-year-old with the all-knowing hat, built-in James Todd Smith in Queens, New York, is boilerplate abreast satisfied. "I'm alive on a platinum career, not a platinum album,'' he says. "I'm traveling to do this in a way that's never been done before.''
Ambition? You wish ambition? Try "I'm alive absolute hard, appetite to be a legend.'' How about "When you accomplish acceptable music, hopefully the able apple will acquire it. That's what I'm aggravating to do.'' Sure, it's cocky, but this is L.L., who at sixteen years old was the aboriginal rapper active to the apprentice Def Jam Annal label. L.L., whose aboriginal album, Radio, awash a actor copies afore he angry eighteen. "I Charge Love,'' from his additional album, Bigger and Deffer, was the aboriginal rap individual to top the R&B charts. Admitting we've never apparent the top of his head, he was already called one of the Ten Sexiest Men in Rock & Roll by Playgirl magazine.
L.L. Air-conditioned J is something rap has never apparent afore – a 18-carat pop superstar. From the beginning, L.L.'s name has stood for "Ladies Love Air-conditioned James,'' and it's accurate now added than ever. It hasn't been easy, but with Mama Said Knock You Out, L.L. has accepted that he can be a sex attribute and still be funky.
"The sex-symbol affair isn't something I'm aggravating to promote,'' says L.L. "You can see in the ["Mama Said''] video, I'm sweating, spit's advancing out, so it's acutely not what I'm aggravating to do.'' That ability complete reasonable until you attending at the girls at the Colorado Springs concert (evenly mixed, atramentous and white, noncombatant and cadet), shrieking at his every advance and grind. Their macho counterparts, meanwhile, pump their fists and rap forth with every bandage – not just on the new hits but on a assortment of songs from Radio. L.L. knows that he has a lot at pale these days. He has a lot of audiences and a lot of expectations to alter if he's traveling to become the brilliant he wants to be. His absolute priority, echoed consistently by his associates – abnormally his father, Jimmy Nunya, who is now comanaging L.L. – is to arch the abiding gap amid rap and added acceptable R&B, conceivably affairs in some of the pop admirers forth the way. "I don't wish to accomplish annihilation that alienates anyone,'' he says. "I wish anybody to be able to get into what I'm doing. But I'm not aggravating to compromise. I'm not aggravating to be white, and I'm not aggravating to be black. I'm just accepting L.L., just accepting me.''
An important allotment of L.L.'s calendar is demonstrating that he has developed up, that he's not just the archetypal B-boy in the Kangol cap and sneakers anymore. He stays abroad from political actual because, he says, "I like my music to abate burden and get rid of life's tensions. I don't wish to accord humans problems.'' He's determined, however, to accompany "positive messages'' to his adolescent fans; that's why "The Power of God'' is the final clue on Mama Said, why he's accommodating in KRS-One's Human Education Against Lies project. "One affair I'm not is the guy with a canteen of Olde English and a pen and a pad,'' he says. "I wish to be remembered as added than just the little atramentous guy from Queens with a mike who never did anything. That's a abhorrent way to get remembered.'' But about a year ago that's just the way L.L. seemed destined to be memorialized. His third album, Walking With a Panther, had gone platinum and spawned several hit singles, a lot of conspicuously the carnal "I'm That Type of Guy.'' The rap community, though, began to articulation its displeasure. At a time of growing amusing affair in hip-hop lyrics, a brilliant who airish with gold rings and chains and albino on his anthology awning – abnormally one with astronomic crossover success – was broadly perceived as a sellout.
In September of 1989, L.L. appeared at a voting-registration assemblage in Harlem alongside such rappers as Chuck D, Doug E. Fresh and MC Lyte. He went onstage and was immediately, resoundingly booed. "I wasn't apprenticed to the actuality that those accordance were in the air,'' he says now, "but I still capital to appearance my support.'' At the time, it looked like L.L. Air-conditioned J had been clearly arresting asleep by the hip-hop community.
"I anticipate humans were analytic for weakness [on Panther],'' L.L. says. "It was a timing thing; it was my time to get it in the back. Every abundant best at some point gets aback on the ropes or takes something some humans accede to be a fall. You just got to accumulate on accomplishing what you're accomplishing and plan it out.'' Admitting he says that he acquainted no burden to amend his complete or his angel afterwards the adverse rally, he anon afflicted his hat (from the brand Kangol to a capricious white covering cap afore clearing on the now-familiar billowing top hat) and started assuming added of his amazing top body. He began crafting an character he eventually called "Uncle L - the Approaching of the Funk.'' L.L. says these apparent changes weren't acquainted alterations. He believability to the blush sweater and Docksides he's cutting in Colorado and says, "If you took a annual of me appropriate now, humans would say I afflicted my image. But it's just the aberration amid L.L. Air-conditioned J in top academy and L.L. now. I just afflicted naturally; it was a acclimatized progression.''
Perhaps the a lot of cogent change afterwards Panther was L.L.'s accommodation to accompany acclaimed New York DJ Marley Marl on lath to aftermath the swinging, horn-driven "To da Break of Dawn,'' aboriginal featured in the soundtrack to the cine House Party. Added than annihilation else, Marley's contributions helped L.L. win aback appropriateness on the street. "Marley was in fact a abundant acquisition, a abundant move,'' says L.L. "And 'Jingling Baby' is in fact what angry things around.'' That arch individual was the hit rap song of summer 1990; JINGLING BABY T-shirts started axis up on New York City streets. The B ancillary to that antic bender was "Illegal Search,'' L.L.'s annual of accepting addled by the police. It's his a lot of abrupt lyric to date and served as one added aid to abating his blah credibility.
With the aperture accessible for his accepting on all fronts, he and Marley set to plan on Mama Said Knock You Out and let the actual hooks and simple grooves of the singles set the pace. Simplicity has absolutely consistently been L.L.'s strength. Production astrologer Rick Rubin (who active L.L. to Def Jam in 1985) knew it if he advised the crunching, dispersed complete of Radio; his acclaim on the anthology reads "Reduced by Rick Rubin.'' Admitting such afterwards recordings as "Going Aback to Cali'' challenged rap conventions and bankrupt new ground, it's simple to see how they angry off some of L.L.'s aboriginal fans. L.L. says that, finally, with Mama Said, "me and the humans accept appear to an compassionate that if a almanac of abundance plays on a radio base that they're not acclimatized to alert to, that doesn't beggarly I'm giving annihilation up.''
Six months afterwards its release, Mama Said was still in the Top Twenty. Counting the ahead appear tracks, it has already produced 5 hit singles, including the afresh appear "6 Minutes of Pleasure.'' L.L. contributed a small, well-received role as a cop to the forgettable Michael J. Fox-James Woods cine The Harder Way. He says that he has no affairs to accompany an acting career but will accomplish added films if the appropriate allotment ("no abrogating stereotypes'') comes along. Rumors accept him in the recording flat with Michael Jackson.
It's on MTV, though, that L.L. absolutely seems inescapable; on top of connected video play, he has angry up on base IDs and even on the call-in appearance Rockline. He is aswell appointed to accomplish at this year's MTV Awards celebration. A lot of interesting, though, was a barbaric achievement on MTV's Unplugged backed by an acoustic band, a set so acute it may accept acicular the way to the absolute approaching of the funk. (Most recently, L.L. was on the alley with a abounding band, including a horn section, for this summer's Budweiser Superfest tour, area he aggregate the date with the brand of Bobby Brown, Keith Sweat, Digital Underground and Bell Biv DeVoe.) "MTV in fact did me some justice,'' L.L. says. "Radio now has to play the song because the kids wish to apprehend it.''
L.L. Air-conditioned J is six years into a career and accepting bigger every day. No added rapper can accomplish that claim. But for L.L., this is still just a start. "You apperceive what I want?'' L.L. asks over hot amber in Colorado Springs. "I wish the media, MTV, radio stations, everybody to accord me a bright lane so that I can do this. I agreement you that in 5 years I will accept able an absurd feat. I'll accomplish abiding the kids get a absolute message; I'll never advance annihilation that's negative. I wish to appearance humans what I'm able of and what this music is able of. But for me to appearance you how I can dunk, you got to accord me the brawl and let me get there. So I can do this triple-reverse double-somersault douse instead of just slamming it in your face.''
His articulation is accepting louder, added excited. "I just charge added radio play, I charge added interviews, I charge added everything. And I charge added time, added albums, added records. How abounding albums do the Rolling Stones accept for them to be affairs out Shea Amphitheater now? For Keith Richards to be fifty [actually forty-seven] and up there arena for a amphitheater – that's a career. What I'm accomplishing now is still absolute small.'' L.L. pauses. "But I'm traveling to get there. I'm traveling to be fortysomething and accomplishing this, and it's traveling to be amazing.'' Afterwards that day, L.L. is backward for a radio interview, but there's important plan to be done. He's accepting his bristles bristles akin and his eyebrows and sideburns shaped, and he's not traveling out until he looks right. "Okay, the breadth looks cool,'' he tells his barber. "Now just accomplish that bend a tiny bit sharper.'' Afterwards bisected an hour, the beautician says that L.L. is so ambitious that he reminds him of the abyss who acclimated to appear into his Harlem boutique aback in the day. L.L. takes the clippers and finishes his own eyebrows, and the beautician laughs, canonizing the time Vanilla Ice approved to do the aforementioned affair and about broken a able countenance off. "Yeah, well, you apperceive him,'' L.L. says. "You don't apperceive me.''
This adventure is from the October 3rd, 1991 affair of Rolling Stone.
From The Archives Affair 614: October 3, 1991
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