Post by Sweet Meat aka CC on Aug 26, 2004 12:17:22 GMT -5
Keeping Cool
LL changes gears, but he still
can't keep his shirt on
LL Cool J is not retiring just yet.
The artist's new album, 'The DEFinition,' comes out this Tuesday.
In the past year, Jay-Z has retired from the rap race. So has DMX.
But don't ask LL Cool J if he's next.
"Retirement isn't even a realistic conversation for me," says the rapper. "I'm nowhere near that page. I was born to do this."
And he has been doing this almost since he was born. For 19 years, LL has sustained a career in a field whose stars are lucky to last 19 minutes.
Call him the Madonna of hip hop. At 36, he knows how important it is to keep displaying new images to the public.
On Tuesday, he'll release his 10th album of new material, "The DEFinition." So, naturally, he has lately tweaked his look - and his clothes.
This time, he's making more attempts to keep them on.
Over the years, LL's naked torso has become as familiar a pop-culture touchstone as Jennifer Lopez's rump or 50 Cent's bullet scars.
These days, when magazine editors ask him to disrobe to show off his famously buff physique for photo shoots, he usually demurs.
"It gets tiring," LL explains. "It's like the guy you see at the gym with muscles who runs around with a tank top in winter. I don't want to be that guy."
Then again, just three weeks ago he tore off his top for the cameras at the "Today" show.
At least he's been more consistent in the tone of the clothes he sells. LL, one of the pioneers of hip-hop cross-marketing is coming out with his third fashion line, which he's named after himself: James Todd Smith.
"It will be upscale," he hawks. "You'll have the ability to look like a million without spending a million."
But if LL means to give off certain messages of maturity, he has also made sure to keep a hold on youthful street culture. "The DEFinition" stresses club music, with an accent on upbeat tracks - thanks to Timbaland, the disk's prime producer.
It's rare for LL to devote so much of a CD to a single producer. "We hit it off," he explains. "The chemistry was right."
The result isn't likely to put LL Cool J back at the cutting edge of hip-hop culture, which he occupied in the early '90s with classic albums like "Mama Said Knock You Out."
But at least it presents another side of a rapper who has already offered a more nuanced view of himself than many in the field.
LL "never put himself in a box as a one-dimensional character," says Erik Parker, music editor of Vibe. "He never hid behind a macho image."
And yet he doesn't lack for respect. LL has been able to pose on the cover of Vibe with his family (which includes three daughters and a son) without coming off like a Will Smith milquetoast.
His image has something in common with that of Bruce Springsteen, who likewise played good guy in a field of rebels while skirting the tag of wimp.
"I'm just being myself," LL says. "I don't have those issues. I come from a loving family. I think people respect you if you don't put on a facade."
The fact that some popular rappers push far crueler images has struck many pundits as an exploitation of racist images of African-Americans.
LL doesn't buy it.
"It's just that way because a lot of young people like the tough guy," he explains. "They get off on Eminem's image, too. It's not racist. People like things that have that fear factor. Look, people watch people eat bugs on TV."
LL's own work on TV involved something considerably lighter - a sitcom on UPN called "In The House" (1995-99). He also has a long list of movie credits, from light fare like "Toys" and "Deliver Us From Eva" to action flicks like "S.W.A.T." and "Rollerball."
But now he's going serious.
This winter he'll be seen in "Edison," a morality tale involving cops and journalists, playing a corrupt cop opposite Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey.
"It takes time to get ," he says. "If I jumped at more of the action movies I would get the most money, but then I wouldn't have a part like this."
LL says he derives different pleasures from movies and music.
"Film is where I've grown. It's where I'm going," he says. "But music was where I started, and I have more accolades there."
Yet LL has lately become sick of everyone asking him just when he thinks he'll be too old for the rap game.
"That's a conversation for Mick Jagger or Steven Tyler," he says. "I thought rock 'n' roll answered this question already. Hip-hop is only 25 years old. Who knows where it will go?"
He only gets betta and betta with time which is why he'll always be around! ::SIGH:: 
