LL Cool J was 22, and people were already saying his best days were behind him.
His grandmother didn’t see it that way. As LL tells it in his autobiography, he told her he wasn’t sure he could survive as a rapper any more. Her advice? Just knock them out.
So he did. The title track of his 1990 album opens with the line everybody knows: “Don’t call it a comeback, I been here for years.”
Marley Marl produced it. Def Jam and Columbia put it out as a single in the US in February 1991, and it reached number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also won LL the Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance.
From house parties to the gym
This was one of the tracks I used to cover when I rapped at parties as a teenager (the same years I was learning on my bedroom decks). These days it gets played a lot in my headphones in the gym, and if you train to music, you’ll know why. The video has LL rapping in a boxing ring, and that’s the energy the whole record has. Yeah, this one’s a classic.
The night rap went unplugged in 1991
If you ever get the chance to see or hear the unplugged version, you’re in for a treat.
In 1991, MTV Unplugged did its first ever rap show, a special called Yo! MTV Raps Unplugged. On the bill were A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, MC Lyte and LL Cool J, with a live band behind them. LL was the only one who did two songs on the half hour that went out. Jingling Baby, then Mama Said Knock You Out.
I remember it so vividly. Sitting and watching it, and recording it to a VHS tape. That entire show was incredible. I always wished they’d done more of them with other rappers, but it never really became a regular thing, not like that one show.
So the next time somebody writes you off, or you catch yourself half writing yourself off, you know what to play.
