LL Cool J - XXLL

He may have big arms, but does LL Cool J have the muscle to keep making waves in music? Naturally, he tells Hattie Collins, thanks to the help of the man upstairs he’s still the Greatest Of All Time.

LL Cool J is concerned. “Make sure you write he told me to do it,” he orders, thrusting a thumb toward his trainer, who has suggested the rapper drop and do 20 before his already bulging biceps are photographed. Ladies Love Cool James, sporting shades and muscle-hugging white vest, wouldn’t want to look vain, apparently.

Ironic, considering the rapper once released a record called G.O.A.T, (Greatest Of All Time), while in the video for his new single, Headsprung, he tears apart a t-shirt every 10 seconds to show-off the six-pack. Still, he’s engaging enough, even when cluttering conversation with unnecessary asides like “I was on a plane– actually it was a private jet…”

Perhaps though, LL has the right to be somewhat self-important. There are precious few rappers with a career as enduring or distinguished as the man christened James Todd Smith. Since his debut as the lip-licking, Kangol-wearing, stud-muffin on the seminal 1985 album Radio, he has sold millions and millions of records, won his bodyweight in awards (no mean feat), starred in a sitcom, successfully ventured into film and cashed in on clothing, advertisement and sponsorship deals. A devoted charity worker, on the Ivory Coast he’s even a.k.a. as Chief Kwasi Achi-Brou, after building a hospital for locals.

“I think I’m the best, of course. How could I not?” he muses in serious tones as though subdued is somehow unassuming. “But it’s not about thinking that you’re greater than God or greater than thou, in terms of your existence as a human being, because art is…” - he thinks hard - “…what it is.”

Yes, mind your blasphemies, LL is a bit of a bible-basher. It’s ‘the Lord’ that has helped him achieve career longevity, ‘a blessing’ that he’s sold so many records and ‘God given’ that he has attained acclaim in films.

Certainly he has something on his side. Of his old-skool counterparts Kool Moe Dee, Doug E Fresh and Big Daddy Kane, LL is the last man standing. He may have made a few musical missteps along the way, yet he always manages to conjure another comeback; one of the few able to collaborate with everyone from J.Lo to Jay-Z.

Not only wangling work with must-have hit-makers like The Neptune’s, Cool J is now about to accelerate an already accomplished acting career into the A-list league. Due for release early next year, Edison, starring Kevin Spacey, Morgan Freeman and Britney’s ex (“Yes, Justin can act”), will mark LL’s first foray into ‘proper’ performance. The film, billed as a Usual Suspects style thriller, sees Cool J play a cop who has “sold his soul.” It’s a part Denzel and Tom Hanks would want, he points out proudly, his greatest role yet.
He’s seemingly sidestepped the Samuel L. Jackson myth that rappers make for rubbish actors. It’s a subject he’s discussed with ‘Sam’, whom LL worked with in Deep Blue Sea and 2003’s SWAT. “I think he’s talking about people who haven’t really trained,” he insists. “I was classically trained over eight years. So I didn’t take it personally.” Besides, Cool J decides, why should he limit himself? “There’s a parable in the bible about multiplying your talents. Leonardo didn’t stop trying to invent things because people liked his paintings.” Quite. “I’m a good actor,” LL continues, though it’s hard to judge his true potential just yet. Since debuting in the hip hop film Krush Groove, he’s either played the generic bad guy or else comedy foil to the likes of Robin Williams in Toys. But then who knew Halle Berry could really act until Monsters Ball enthralled The Academy, he points out. Aha - is he talking Oscar with Edison? A grin. “From your mouth to Gods ears,” comes the religified reply.

As a budding thesp, he certainly has plenty of emotional memory to recall. As well as God and hard toil – “faith without work is dead” – LL attributes his success as both rapper and actor, to an embattled childhood. “Carbon has to be blessed with pressure before it can become a diamond. It’s the resistance of the wind that makes a kite fly,” he points out dead serious. He loves a metaphor does LL.

Born 36 years ago in St. Albans, New York before moving to the somewhat less savoury Queens, the young James lived with grandparents and mother. Smith Sr, a nasty piece of work by all accounts, was in and out of his son’s life, returning home when LL was a teenager. One day, his father pulled out a gun and shot his mother and grandfather, though thankfully both survived. Nice guy. “I don’t see my father. We don’t have a relationship,” LL admits. “Some things fall off the boat, you know? And that’s one of those things that got thrown off the boat.”

Talking about the past agitates LL. He once wrote a book called I Make My Own Rules, which detailed his troubled upbringing, the early years of fame (and the excess of groupies and drugs that accompanied it) though to the big man intervening and showing him the light, Today though LL doesn’t care to dwell. “I think I was doing what I knew how to do - I don’t judge it. I don’t look back. I don’t live my life in the rear-view mirror because if you do, you’re bound to end up wrapped around a pole somewhere.” Nowadays he’s a happily married father of four, dedicated to family life. The champagne and chicks he talks about in records like 1 In The Morning are just part of the image, although he still love a knees-up. “Puffy ain’t the only one throwing parties,” he says.

LL’s disinclination for introspection may have something to do with his age. As an actor he’s perhaps about to enter his prime, but where does he see himself in a hip hop populated by young guns like Lloyd Banks and J-Kwon? “On this couch talking to you,” he deadpans. “It ain’t about none of that. I’m about wherever the people that are fans of me think I am. This is art, you know?”

Unlike a Jay-Z, LL has no intention of hanging up his microphone just yet. “Why would I?” he says, appearing most affronted. “I don’t even know what any of that is. I, I…that’s them,” he stumbles for a second. “They can do whatever they want. I do what I want to do. I love my fans, I love my music – I have no reason to retire.” He may have lost the rage of Mama Said Knock You Out, but a brief listen to his Timbaland produced 11th album, DEFinition, sees LL back on track after the saccharine-sweetness of 2002’s 10 (which sold two million records despite being critically unacclaimed).

Besides, he has a lot left to accomplish yet he says, fingering the tattoo of a microphone that winds around his tree-trunk triceps. More Grammy’s, an Oscar maybe? Maybe a move into politics? He’s not so sure about the last one. “God blesses us all with different views and perspectives and levels of influence and power. Hands, feet, ears, eyes, nose – we’re all different parts of the human body and we all have our individual functions,” he nods meaningfully before lightening up a little. “I don’t mean to be overly philosophical but that’s just who I am,” he shrugs. “I can’t pretend to give you an answer that's not real to me.” That’s LL – keeping it real-igious to the last.

DEFinition is out now.

A version of this article appeared in the Guardian Guide