LL Cool J and MC Lyte crack the comeback-album curse : NPR

LL Cool J’s 2024 album The FORCE finds the rapper looser and extra agile than he is sounded in years, assisted by eclectic manufacturing from Q-Tip.

Cory Grimes

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Cory Grimes

In 2016, De La Soul, certainly one of rap’s most elemental teams, needed to begin from scratch. After elevating hip-hop within the late Eighties and ‘90s with a four-album run that rivals any within the historical past of the style, the trio discovered itself snake-bitten by its personal inventiveness — particularly its copious use of samples as inlays in a fantastic mosaic, which swept it into protracted authorized battles that saved the music inaccessible properly into the post-Napster digital age. Because the members continued to hunt restitution (even releasing the albums without cost at one level out of frustration), they crowd-funded a brand new album on Kickstarter. And the Nameless No one…, a largely sample-free affair in silent protest of the hostage scenario round their catalog, overhauled the De La sound for an internet-connected period, taking 200 hours of recorded audio from the soul band the group toured with and melding it right into a sweeping amalgamation of funk. Each their misadventures and eventual sonic migration charted the gap between the hip-hop world that De La Soul helped construct and the one it discovered itself navigating on-line, difficult its very identification within the course of. If the group was doomed to be nameless to a era of younger rap followers, it will lean into that obscurity in pursuit of artistic freedom. “That is about an individual selflessly giving the whole lot they might to make one thing cool or new or enjoyable or higher occur,” Trugoy the Dove informed The New York Instances that August. Being unplugged from the archive proved liberating.

Selflessly making one thing cool or new or enjoyable or higher occur within the autumn of 1’s artistry has been a problem for a lot of of De La’s golden-age friends. Rummage by the late-career work of artists like Public Enemy, Ice Dice and KRS-One, and you’ll really feel a reasonably dramatic drop-off from the punchy provocations of their groundbreaking days. A few of that may be a given: The fireplace can’t burn endlessly, artists typically fade with age, and rap has typically been fast to carbon-date prospects who can’t even hire a automobile but. However there may be additionally an apparent threshold requiring reorientation, a degree of no return the place one’s grasp of their very own artwork and its operate not aligns with an impetuous zeitgeist. It’s fairly tough to be on the reducing fringe of a artistic motion twice in a profession, as a result of actions change. Evaluating rap within the ‘80s to rap in 2024 is like evaluating the NBA throughout those self same eras: They’re two completely different video games, performed at completely different speeds and to completely different requirements. Usually, new albums from elder rappers have the sensation of nonetheless taking part in by the previous guidelines, too restricted of their actions to maintain tempo.

In latest weeks, two pioneers of the golden-age rap revolution have launched new albums that buck the sample: LL Cool J’s The FORCE, a dynamic showcase of adaptive evolution, and MC Lyte’s 1 of 1, a private manifesto for surviving the occasions. Each pull off an acrobatic feat of staying true to the identities that outlined them as artists with out feeling slowed down by all of the historical past: up-to-speed however not trend-chasing, mature however not fossilized. As an alternative of self-indulgently doubling down on previous triumphs or desperately chasing relevance, these albums profit from a recommitment to craft, with slight however sharp shifts in perspective that refurbish their still-potent voices.

As soon as described by Alan Mild in Rolling Stone as “one thing rap has by no means seen earlier than — a real pop famous person,” LL Cool J set the archetype for the charismatic hip-hop stud, a crossover artist standing on the middle of Def Jam’s foundational dynasty with a voice as booming as his lyrics have been suave. For the reason that demise of MTV, his magnetic pull has step by step waned: There hasn’t been an LL album in over a decade, when 2013’s Genuine appeared to cement a gradual descent into obsolescence for the legend.

All through the 2000s, he’d constantly put out information looking for one final hit. The music was heavy on gradual jams, angling for radio and filled with head-scratching options. The interval was epitomized by the Brad Paisley collab “Unintended Racist,” a slipshod conflation of white stereotyping and Black nervousness by which he actually rapped the phrases, “When you don’t decide my gold chains, I’ll neglect the iron chains.” The track felt not simply cringey however swagless, seemingly exposing a lack of the ranginess he as soon as radiated.

By that time, he didn’t want the work. Since 2009, LL has starred within the CBS procedural NCIS: Los Angeles, fronted the truth competitors Lip Sync Battle and served a five-year stint as Grammy host. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 2021, and has moved right into a liminal house between artist and effigy — ascending like Snoop Dogg to a stage of cultural ubiquity that makes stepping away from rap music not merely viable however justifiable, his hip-hop legacy changing into a sort of avatar for everlasting unc standing. Within the interim, he appeared noncommittal about rap’s place in his increasing job hierarchy and conflicted about simply how a lot he had left within the tank. In 2016, he introduced a short-lived retirement, and in 2023 he appeared to scrap a comeback file for worry that it merely wasn’t as much as snuff: “I’m actually Attempting to determine this album out. SMH,” he wrote in a deleted sequence of tweets. “Simply not feeling this album is worthy of being launched. I attempted.”

It was shortly after that spell of doubt that he introduced the mulligan that will ultimately turn out to be The FORCE, a venture for which he’s mentioned he needed to train himself the right way to rap once more. The training curve clearly wasn’t too steep, as a result of the album appears like an athlete rediscovering his limberness, his dormant muscle reminiscence activating abruptly. It’s the sort of work that wouldn’t have even felt potential across the time of Genuine: LL hasn’t sounded this free and comfy for the reason that ‘90s, and he does so whereas attempting on new hats — the Kangol nonetheless matches, although — and reckoning with the place he matches into rap now. “It’s like I died and got here again, completely different faces and ages / On their telephones and computer systems, nobody is readin’ the papers,” he raps on “30 Decembers.” “And these youngsters don’t even know who I’m / You don’t know you within the presence of an actual made man.” It’s this slight particularly that appears to be driving him the toughest. I typically consider LL’s 2017 tweet offering youthful generations of rap stars with an ultimatum — “If I hear yet one more horrible rap file I’m gonna should do it to those meatballs.” On the time, it felt extra like a finger-wagging reprimand than a real menace — however The FORCE is animated by that very want to point out the youngsters the way it’s completed, and remind everybody else who he was — and nonetheless is.

His first and maybe pivotal act was commissioning Q-Tip as his main producer. Seemingly ageless, Tip stays among the many most ingenious beatmakers in rap, classic but stylish. Having succeeded as soon as already at this sort of revival train with the farewell A Tribe Known as Quest album, We Acquired It from Right here… Thank You 4 Your Service, right here he leads LL by a sequence of beats that sound like rumbling, tagged-up practice vehicles. LL treats each as his personal canvas, and it may be awe-inspiring watching a grasp lower free. He goes stride for stride with Eminem on “Murdergram Deux,” taking part in round in Shady’s yard with shuffling, multisyllabic raps carried out with a mischievous air. Songs like “Saturday Night time Particular” and “Ardour” are coolly and calmly executed, and there’s a smoothness to all he does that honors his standing as a playboy charmer. The 2 halves of his persona — a girls’ man of all-around enchantment absorbing a lavish life, and a commanding entertainer dead-set on substantiating his timelessness — are in excellent steadiness.

MC Lyte’s 1 of 1 is her first album in 9 years, a sort of reclamation venture for the profession achievements the rapper has seen go ignored or exploited.

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Naomi Brown Pictures

If The FORCE finds LL Cool J affirming his fame, then 1 of 1 finds MC Lyte reappraising hers. A prodigy who wrote her incisive crack period polemic, “I Cram to Perceive U (Sam),” when she was solely 16, the rapper has struggled to recoup what’s owed to her, on the again finish and within the public consciousness. She was the primary girl rapper to launch a studio album, to be nominated for a Grammy as a solo artist and to have a gold single. Regardless of honors like BET’s I Am Hip-Hop award, her impression countering rap misogyny and serving to to usher in a extra grounded rap motion haven’t been weighted as closely because the accomplishments of her male contemporaries, and she or he has been clear about her label and publishing disputes, formally reclaiming her title from First Precedence Music in 2021. Solely the third MC Lyte album of the twenty first century and the primary since 2015’s Legend (which was launched independently and isn’t out there on streaming), 1 of 1 exudes a readability of goal befitting an artist who, on the one hand, has nothing left to show, however on the opposite, is painfully conscious that she has but to obtain her due. Lyte has described the album as “a second coming of age,” which feels becoming: The songs are charged by self-improvement, filled with gathered knowledge from an underrated overachiever.

Lyte made the album together with her pastor, the Grammy-winning producer Warryn Campbell, who has existed on the intersection of gospel and rap his whole profession, and collectively they create her mission-minded music to a devotional place. Campbell ushers her towards reflection with beats that soar throughout time, from boom-bap to jazz rap with soul sampling and choir course, and she or he struts by every with a matter-of-fact supply that implies fortitude. On “To RockThe Mic,” Lyte paints rap as a calling that she answered and can’t ignore: “Cannot be stopped by even what I been by / What I been by coulda shook my psychological / However I saved all of it collectively, I used to be meant to.” The pent-up restlessness of practically 30 years spent on rap’s margins is unleashed in bobbing verses that casually deploy her technical savvy. For each track in regards to the obstacles she has confronted all through a tumultuous profession there may be one on the character-building of tolerating such problems. On “Lyte Ghost Lil Mama,” she raps indignantly however with composure, as if attempting to elucidate her scenario to a good friend — being between offers, a label dropping religion in her and scrapping a track with The Neptunes, not proudly owning the publishing for a success track — however the sashaying follow-up “Kick Again Calm down” is eased and unwound, carrying the aid and launch of unclenched shoulders. “Stress ain’t nothin’ however a take a look at,” she pledges, and in each modes her flows really feel sturdy and battle-tried, shifting with artisan-like grit and effectivity.

That persistence comes with a starvation for reform. At one level on 1 of 1, a skit finds Lyte canvassing in New York Metropolis to turn out to be Mayor of Hip-Hop. “My platform is change,” she tells a potential voter on the streets of Flatbush. It will be extra correct to say that her platform is restoration. She desires a rehabilitation of the rapper, and reinstatement of old fashioned values — not an unusual stance amongst rappers of a sure age, however Lyte comes on the name to motion from a extra empathetic place. “We bought the entire world lookin’ at our sport, lookin’ crooked / Whereas the person overtook it,” she raps on “Music Is,” earlier than asking, “Can we take it again, declare it for retains?” The query is rhetorical. The album performs like step one in Lyte’s grasp plan to get issues again on observe. You don’t should imagine what she believes to really feel the burden of her efforts, which search out the next trigger — or slightly, see rap as a way to better advocacy.

Each LL and Lyte are anchored by the identical beliefs on their new albums: religion and activism. Throughout the 2 information, there may be spirited music of reward and protest grounding the comebacks. The FORCE opens with the militant “Spirit of Cyrus,” a imaginative and prescient of taking over the cops later underscored by the Pantherisms of “Huey within the Chair.” “Nucleus of the tradition, so he’s African sculpture / Carved by the gods and clappin’ in any respect these vultures,” LL raps, drawing a line between his stature and the accountability that comes with it. A track later, on “Reward Him,” he groups up with Nas, searching for to solidify himself as a rap savior. 1 of 1 opens with the gospel-infused “Thank You,” the place Lyte turns rap right into a holy enterprise: “You’re the Lyte as a result of I made you, by no means be afraid to / Stand tall towards ‘em all and shield what I gave you,” she raps, quoting His phrases to her as she takes up her mantle with renewed vigor. With safety as her mandate, she, too, stands up towards violent policing and corruption on “Change Your Methods,” earlier than asking different rappers to do extra. Although the track veers dangerously near respectability politics, this resolve for all rappers — together with her — to place the wants of their constituency earlier than private gratification provokes daring exhibitions that deal with rap because the crusader apply she has devoted her life to.

For every artist, pondering of themselves and of rap as vessels for some sort of larger energy appears key to their renewed focus. It’s proper there within the title of the LL album — The FORCE, as if he’s tapping into some sort of sacred continuum just like the one from Star Wars. The quilt artwork has the phrase that acronym represents, “frequencies of actual artistic vitality,” scrawled in squiggly strains that imitate wavelengths. In activating these frequencies, MC Lyte and LL Cool J are in a position to attract upon the ever-elusive essence, the stream that pours out of all nice hip-hop, regardless of the period. Drawing it out requires a sure flexibility, a lot confidence in a single’s creative identification that there isn’t a worry in modifying it. These new information really feel like proof that such conviction can maintain rappers by shifts in type and strategy, maintaining them tethered to an ever-changing world with out dropping a grip on the important qualities that made them originals within the first place.