Rapper/actor LL Cool J appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” this week. The star shared the story of his mother, a demo, and how a tax refund helped him get the tape recorded. LL says his mom saw how dejected he became after his earlier demo recordings were rejected, so she took matters into her own hands.
“I sent demo after demo into every record company,” LL said. “I got rejection letters from company after company and I just kept at it. Then what actually happened is I quit. My mother took her tax return and bought me some equipment because she knew I was depressed and I was down in the dumps because I didn’t have the proper equipment to make what I felt was a good demo. So, she took her whole tax return bought me a drum machine. It was a Korg actually. And me and my man Frankie went in the basement, we didn’t even read the instructions. We played it manually.”
The demo landed in the hands of Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys, who then suggested that Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin listen to the tape. Rubin gave the tape to his then-partner, Russell Simmons.
“I sent it in to Rick Rubin at his dorm. He had a little production company in his dormitory, Def Jam Productions,” he said. “Actually Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys heard the demo and he played it for Rick. They decided that ‘Oh, he sounds good, bring him in.’ And I would call Rick every single day and bug him…I just was stalking him and stalking him. Finally he called me back and told me to come in. When I met him I was like—I thought he was gonna be black…We went back in the studio and made another song called ‘I Need A Beat.’ Played that for Russell and Russell was like ‘Yeah, this is it. This is it.’ And that started Def Jam. And the rest is history.”
