Walking With a Panther (1989)

By the late ‘80s, LL Cool J was firmly at the top of the rap music world. Buoyed by an upgraded sound, a wider topical range, sharpened rapping skills, and an unexpected hit of a romance song, Bigger and Deffer became the best-selling rap album of 1987. No longer a student at Andrew Jackson High School or lodging in his grandmom’s house, LL was now a bonafide star, living large. And he wasn’t even old enough yet to drink alcohol: legally. You can’t blame the kid for having a swelled head.

But rap music was evolving, and some of its participants began to voice their displeasure at the self-proclaimed “baddest rapper in the history of rap itself.” So, even as LL Cool J continued to achieve mainstream success, it ultimately remained to be seen how his third album, Walking With a Panther, was going to turn out.

There’s LL Cool J at the back cover art, engrossed with his cell phone to his ear, flanked on one side by three hot young ladies holding champagne bottles, like as though they are waiting for LL to kick off a menage-a-quatre. Even the black panther seated in front of him is flossing, rocking a gold dookie chain over its neck. That back album insert would make LL a little-discussed progenitor of hedonism, a feature that’s now so commonplace in rap today.

LL Cool J was back for a third go-round in ’89. Just the year before, he had scored a Top 40 pop hit, “Going Back to Cali,” the video for which he got substantial airplay at a time when rap videos on MTV were sparse. “Going Back to Cali” reunited LL with Rick Rubin, who had left Def Jam and headed west—and consequently poured his experience into the single’s subject matter and title.

But on this album cycle, it was a whole different ball game. At the home front, Rubin was not the only one who had left. The L.A. Posse, integral to the sound of LL’s second album, Bigger and Deffer, was gone, too—well, two of them anyway. Considering the double platinum sales of the album they worked on, one of the producers, Darryl “Big Dad” Pierce; and Bobby “Bobcat” Ervin, who served as an additional DJ to LL’s longtime compadre Cut Creator, wanted a bigger cut of the proceeds for the next album. Def Jam, however, refused to renegotiate their contact. So, they bounced, leaving Dwayne “Muffla” Simon with LL, who, even though he had involved himself in the previous album, certainly didn’t consider production his primary profession. But there he was, producing most of the upcoming album himself, and not only would that strain occasionally show in the music, but also in the liner notes.

Then there was Def Jam itself, with a growing roster that reflected rap’s evolution. The record label now included Public Enemy, who were part of a new wave of rap acts expressing socio-political consciousness or racial pride. Also on board was Slick Rick, a British import that pushed the boundaries of storytelling rap like never before.

Outside the confines of Def Jam, other rappers were beginning to strike. Fellow New Yorker Kool Moe Dee, who belonged to the first generation of rappers as a former member of the Treacherous Three, didn’t look fondly upon the next-gen upstart. He accused LL of being disrespectful to his musical elders based on certain lyrics in Bigger and Deffer, which had been released in May 1987. When Moe Dee put out his album, How Ya Like Me Now, about six months later, he had on the front cover a Kangol bucket hat—LL’s symbolic headgear of choice—underneath the wheels of a Jeep. And yes, Kool Moe Dee had a few choice words in the title track for the presumed whippersnapper.

Out west, Ice-T also took offense at LL’s lyrics and dissed him—not once, but twice—in his album, Power, which came out in September 1988. In his view, LL was an egotistical and washed-up rapper who had grown “soft” due to his loverman image—no thanks to “I Need Love” and “Going Back to Cali.” As a result, the core rap audience was losing interest in him.

LL was only 21 years old when Walking With a Panther saw the light of day on June 9th, 1989. But he must have felt like an old man in a rocking chair. Once considered cutting-edge, his party-style boasts now sounded antiquated. In the album jacket, he expresses thoughts and aspirations that come off as something anyone would expect from Public Enemy or Boogie Down Productions or Big Daddy Kane. But those sentiments don’t quite translate well on wax. Only two of a mind-boggling sixteen, eighteen, or twenty songs—depending on whichever album version people purchased at the time—are even remotely socially aware. In “Def Jam in the Motherland,” he gives a nod or two to Africa, an acknowledgement of his earlier visit to Cote d’Ivoire in late 1988. Otherwise, it’s just endless boasting over a monotonous murky soul loop. The other song in question, “Change Your Ways”, is as generic as one can get talking about the right things to do in everyday life. Unsurprisingly, both songs are the last ones in the album, almost functioning as an afterthought, or write-offs for an erstwhile vainglorious project.

After the highs of Radio and Bigger and Deffer, LL Cool J was not primed for the stumble he would suffer with Walking With a Panther. It just didn’t feel the same. It didn’t sound the same. Once the master of braggadocio rap, LL had been overtaken by other rappers like Big Daddy Kane and yes, his arch-rival Kool Moe Dee: emcees who stretched the technicalities of rapping. He tried, oh he tried so hard to catch up. “Nitro” is a five-minute blitzkrieg, LL tearing a page or two from his peers with internal rhyming and increasing his rhyming-syllable-per-bar ratio over a P-Funk sample and James Brown grunts buttressed by a rapid breakbeat provided by the Bomb Squad, who happened to be Public Enemy’s in-house production crew.

I'm so nice yo, flowing with the maestro
Murdering and hurting MCs because I'm nitro
The earthquakes'll kill snakes and fakes
You can't flake, you made a mistake, give me a break – thanks!

“Why Do You Think They Call It Dope?” and “It Gets No Rougher” are almost as good, with more boasting over lightening-paced funk beats. “Why Do You Think They Call It Dope?” is perhaps the fastest song he has ever done, tongue-twisting occasionally and allowing his DJ, Cut Creator, to close the affair with an astounding display of scratching.

But that’s where the good stuff ends as far as battle rap is concerned. And even with those tracks, they sound like second-tier material next to earlier songs like “Rock the Bells” and “I’m Bad.” The wah-wah guitar-draped steel drums fail to add any more excitement to the one-dimensional feel of LL’s bragging in “Droppin’ Em.” The slow gloom of “Smokin’ Dopin’” is a snore fest. The best thing about “Jingling Baby” is the conga-driven beat that conveniently outshines LL’s vapid rapping.

And what could have been a suitable retort to Kool Moe Dee’s scathing diss song, the follow-up, “Let’s Go,” instead becomes a frustratingly subliminal bore in the simple-titled “Jealous.” As he and Cut Creator pour champagne amidst the droning funk backdrop, you can only wonder what the celebration was for, especially when “Jack the Ripper,” LL’s official response to Kool Moe Dee’s “How Ya Like Me Now,” was left off the vinyl and CD versions of the album.

Contrary to what LL Cool J might have thought, he had a lot to be concerned about. He was slowly slipping into artistic irrelevance. Spouting out these now-infamous words in the slow torture of “Clap Your Hands” [“I’m so bad, I can suck my own d**k!”] proved that he was so gassed off his own ego, he failed to realize he was suffering a severe case of self-denial. Even his other forte, the rap ballad, came up short: twice out of three times. “You’re My Heart” is a rather touching song, with LL holding on to his lost love for five uninterrupted verses over a slow-moving confluence of melodramatic and vibrant strings and organs.

Too bad that kind of indomitable spirit does not translate into the other two songs. “One Shot at Love” is impeded by a piano-sprinkled beat that moves at a light but laborious pace as LL conjures yawns with common knowledge about relationships. And as for “Two Different Worlds”, well, LL and yelping singer Cynde Monet go back and forth over the sickeningly syrupy beat about their compatibility without once convincing the listener why anyone should care. Hands down, this is the worst song in the entire album. Where is the genius of “I Need Love” when he needs it?

The numbers that end up working, at least some of them, are those that come from left field. “Fast Peg” is too short at less than two minutes, but it keeps the listener somewhat riveted to see what would happen next in the tale about a crook’s girlfriend. After all, it is called “Fast Peg”. The same goes for “1-900 LL Cool J”: yeah, too short. For once, LL’s massive ego works to his advantage as he gets creative—and is entertaining—in a role as the founder of his request line. 

And, of course, there are the three big singles. The least successful of the three, “Big Ole Butt,” makes the sin of cheating sound so exhilarating, as LL hops to the next chick at the expense of the previous one in each verse over a simple but snappy funk track to especially accentuate the sexual innuendo. And there’s LL chuckling to himself, admitting that he’s leaving a girl because he found another that has a “big ol’ butt.” He’s far from sly or a saint, but somehow he makes you root for him in his little mischievous ventures.

There’s that same trait in the Top 20 pop hit, “I’m That Type of Guy,” this time utilizing chilling bass and that echoing piano note layered over a crisp drum beat to narrate his misdeeds. And last but certainly not least is the slick horn-helmed “Going Back to Cali,” which was originally on the soundtrack for the film Less Than Zero. Granted, LL really says nothing substantial: just hanging out in the sunny west coast with a bevy of pretty ladies. Yet his whispery style, aided greatly by the jazz-tinged instrumental, wins the listener over. These songs are some of the best pieces of pop candy LL Cool J ever created.

Yet it’s the sheer strength of these songs that makes the major weakness of Walking With a Panther all the more apparent. The quality of the lyrics and the production is so scattershot that it feels that LL made three strong singles, increased the number of bragging and love tracks, and threw in a few half-baked ideas to complete the filler.

The interesting thing is that it worked, commercially. Walking With a Panther quickly went Platinum, actually selling faster than Bigger and Deffer initially. But then it stalled, and unpopular opinion about LL Cool J, particularly in the hip hop community, climaxed at a rally in Harlem for Yusef Hawkins, a Black youth who had lost his life on August 23^rd, 1989, after an attack in an Italian American neighborhood. The rally, which included a rap concert, took place on September 17^th. With a record released three months prior that showcased his gold chains, perpetual boasting, overemphasis on love songs, and unrepentant materialism, LL seemed out of touch in a musical realm that was increasingly growing racially aware of its surroundings. And those in attendance, about 10,000 of them, made him know exactly how they felt about him.

It was easy to pile on a record like Walking with a Panther. At the time of its release, there was the perception that the man who was once hard as hell, fell off hard. But in retrospect, considering the subsequent releases of the late 1990s onward, LL’s third studio album is actually one of his better ones, as well as possibly the most intriguing and interesting LP in his catalog. There’s something fascinating and admirable about listening to how rap’s foremost solo artist responds to the changing times and the adversity, possibly confused and disoriented, almost like he’s trying to keep one foot in one world while placing the other foot in another. But back in 1989, that wasn’t a good thing. And that was why eventually, LL had to retreat into his childhood home in St. Albans, where his grandmother was waiting for him.