LL Cool J

Mama Said Knock You Out
Def Jam, 1990

One of the most striking examples of gangsta rap's rise to the top of the hip hop food chain in the early '90s was the reinvention of LL Cool J from teen magazine pin-up to street thug, pivoting on his best-selling album Mama Said Knock You Out. James Todd Smith III made his name as a teenager, under the acronym for Ladies Love Cool James, with a series of rhymes about how good he was at rhyming. And he was good. On his first album Radio he boasted incessantly and threw around disses that walked a fine line between stupid and hilarious, like: "Why are you so stiff? Is it something that your mother did?/ Maybe you grew up around can't-dance people when you were a can't-dance kid."

In his eyes, the only thing Cool J did better than rhyming was loving. He pioneered the sort of sensitive rap ballads that would become regular crossover hits in the pop charts with early cuts 'I Can Give You More' and 'I Want You'. In '87 he nailed it with 'I Need Love', a sappy single with a soft-focus film clip that painted him as a lonely artist trapped in the eye of the storm that was his fame, and ended with a heartfelt plea to the camera: "I need true love, and if you want to give it to me girl, make yourself seen. I'll be waiting for you." It went straight to number 1 on the R&B chart.

But such sentimental crap wasn't going to cut it for much longer, as black fans and critics began to embrace the heavier sounds of radicalised groups like Public Enemy and NWA. Just three years after 'I Need Love', Cool J found himself out of touch. He remedied this, quite successfully, with the comeback record Mama Said Knock You Out. The title single's eloquent rhymes were a reminder of how he'd made it to the top in the first place, but something was different. Mixed in with the jokes and boasts were constant references to violence and imagery of towns being bombed. By the time his next record was released, the transition was complete. It was called 14 Shots To The Dome and featured the heartfelt lines: "I fuck you in the head just to let you know/ Stick you for yo' dough and spit on your flo'."