LOS ANGELES — Back in the late ’80s, Ladies Love Cool James, better known as LL Cool J, helped to usher in a music revolution when the kid with the Kangol partnered up with Russell Simmons and Def Jam. The love rap ballad “I Need Love” from the classic Bigger and Deffer LP became the first rap song to ever enter the Top 20 of the Billboard Pop Charts.
Backstage at the 42nd NAACP Image Awards, LL Cool J, now a star on the weekly drama “NCIS: Los Angeles,” discussed how he’s authoring another revolution in music whereby young hip hop heads from opposite sides of North America can somehow make music together.
“I have an online music distribution network where a kid from Orange County, N.J. will be able to go online with a kid from Miami, and they’re going to be able to make a song at the same time in real time,“ James Todd Smith said Friday night after winning the award for best actor in a dramatic series. “We are going to launch it and I think it’s going to revolutionize music. And, if done right, I can do for the recording industry now the way we did many, many years ago when we launched Def Jam. Right now, we have a lot of artists uploading music, but that’s all in preparation.”
In preparation for another watershed moment in music history. –terry shropshire
