LL Cool J spills the details on what fans can expect from his long-awaited album The Force.
After 11 years and much anticipation, LL is finally releasing his 14th studio album and recently discussed its inspiration at a special listening event with ET‘s Rachel Smith.
“I’m just excited for [fans] to get to experience what me and Q-Tip have been working on all this time,” he said. “I know it’s been a long time since I put out an album that moved the culture and gave people my perspective on where I think the state of the art should be. And so, rather than get out here and talk about what should be, I decided to create some music and show people what I think hip-hop can sound like in 2024, you know what I’m saying?”
Slated for release on September 6, LL Cool J’s album, The FORCE (short for “Frequencies of Real Creative Energy”), will explore a range of topics from racial division to his personal experiences of isolation during the COVID lockdown.
“It’s kind of a matter of just being open to what’s going on in the world… It’s a lot of fun on [the album], lot of energy, good vibes,” he added of the upcoming album. “[There are] all kinds of themes on there so it’s not only a dark, heavy thing but there are some things on there that kind of touch the world from different perspectives.”
LL Cool J went on to maintain that his job as an artist is to “get out of the way and let the song speak,” and with The FORCE, he’s definitely letting the beats do the talking!
“This is where I was led and I feel like people are gonna really enjoy it,” he continued. “There’s got to be more to the music and more to Hip Hop than just the surface and so what I did was, I had fun with the surface — of course — but then there are moments in the album where it goes a little deeper and we get a little more profound and we have some deeper thoughts and deeper meanings. So it’s a combination of your normal, fun, mundane silliness combined with some things that I think are more important but said in an artistic way. I just wanted to make something cool, that’s all.”
Of course, this deeper approach came with significant growth and maturity for the rapper. Reflecting on his evolution, he shared,”As you mature and evolve, you start realizing, it was all about me and I [was] thinking about me. Now, I can look this way and say, ‘Make it about somebody else.’”
He continued: “Now I can help other people. So the guys that I might have been competitive with back in the days, now I’m looking at [them] like, ‘How can I help you?’”
With two Grammy wins under his belt and a slew of hit collaborations with artists like Method Man, Redman, Jennifer Lopez, Babyface, Ludacris, Amerie, and more, our expectations for LL Cool J’s new album are certainly sky-high!