ARTIST

LL Cool J

Hip-hop is notorious for short-lived careers, but LL Cool J is the inevitable exception that proves the rule wrong. Releasing his first hit "I Can't Live Without My Radio" in 1985 when he was just 17 years old, LL initially was a hard-hitting, street-wise b-boy with spare beats and ballistic rhymes. He quickly developed an alternate style: a romantic -- and occasionally sappy -- lover's rap epitomized by his mainstream breakthrough single, "I Need Love."

LL's first two albums Radio and Bigger and Deffer made him a star, but he strived for pop stardom a little too much on 1989's Walking With a Panther. By 1990, his audience had declined somewhat, since his ballads and party raps were the opposite of the chaotic, edgy, political hip-hop of...
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