Mama Said Knock You Out (1990)

Ellen Griffith was initially skeptical. What good could come out of a 9^th-grade dropout who had decided to pursue a career in a field that many critics dismissed as a fad? But her grandson, James Todd Smith, was adamant about his new path. And his persistence would pay off, literally, a few years later, when he returned to Griffith’s home: with a $50,000 advance check.

Yes, Griffith was technically the maternal grandmother of Smith, better known to the world as LL Cool J. But she had been more like a mother to him, especially when he and his actual mother, Ondrea Griffith, moved in with her in St. Albans, Queens.

Of course, after that advance check, LL Cool J would go on to achieve success as one of rap’s brightest stars. But after a few years, he was back—more specifically, in Griffith’s basement: down, disillusioned, dejected, and disconnected from a hip hop community he had helped build. His career was taking a downturn, the lowest point being booed off stage at a rap concert during a rally for hate-crime victim Yusef Hawkins. LL was struggling with how to reverse this downturn. And his grandmom, seeing him wallowing in his misery, asking her for her counsel, delivered the words that motivated him to eventually get back on his feet:

“You should get out there and knock them out!”

On the front cover of his fourth album, Mama Said Knock You Out, which was undoubtedly inspired by Ellen Griffith’s words, LL Cool J is ripped, shirtless, enveloped in darkness with clasped fists, ready to kick the living crap out of every single one of his demons and detractors.

LL Cool J had only been in the music business for five years. And yet the rapidly changing genre he was a part of made it seem like he had been in it for five decades. He was only twenty-two years old at the time Mama Said Knock You Out was released on September 14^th, 1990. But he was already a seasoned veteran in this new sport, with his share of peaks and valleys. Up to that point, he was at a professional low. His third album, 1989’s Walking With a Panther, had been shockingly inconsistent, and some critics were worried that he was being left behind. In terms of rapping technique, acts like Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, and Kool Moe Dee, who had emerged as his chief rival, pummeled him. Topically, acts such as Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions buried him. In terms of being a toughie, acts like Ice-T and N.W.A. had him beat. And even commercially, acts like Tone-Loc, Young M.C., MC Hammer, and DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince were outshining him.

LL Cool J was part of rap’s second generation, which included Whodini and Run DMC. But both Whodini and Run DMC were fading by the end of the 1980s. And so was he. He had to do something about his decline—and fast.

As terrific of a rapper that he indeed was, LL Cool J must have felt that he couldn’t go on this brand-new venture alone. He needed a sonic update, and he apparently felt that he was not the right man for the job. Self-production was now out of the question, as evidenced by the haphazard quality of Walking With a Panther. Somewhere in Queens, the same borough LL hailed from, someone was watching. That someone was Marley Marl: producer, one of the pioneers of sampling in hip hop, and the head of the Queens collective The Juice Crew, which housed soon-to-be greats such as Big Daddy Kane, Kool G. Rap, and Masta Ace.

Marley Marl, however, was not just a producer, but also a mixer. One song in Walking With a Panther stood out to him in terms of badly needing a remix. And it turned out that it was more than the instrumental that needed a revamp. Some of LL Cool J’s lyrics in “Jingling Baby” were uncharacteristically crude and vulgar, so for his part, he cleaned up the offending lines.

By the time Marley Marl got to the track, LL had also put in a bassline to give “Jingling Baby” more flesh. Marley Marl finished up by clipping the bassline, deemphasizing the stark Black Belt Jones theme sample, and added the bright organs from Central Line’s 1981 hit “Walking Into Sunshine” for the bridge. The result was “Jingling Baby (Remixed but Still Jingling),” a much more vibrant, party-friendly song than the original, with a New Jack Swing feel that still holds up well years later.

In addition, LL Cool J had someone return from the L.A. Posse era. Bobby “Bobcat” Ervin had left after the making of Bigger and Deffer due to Def Jam’s refusal to renegotiate its production contract with the L.A. Posse, of which Bobcat was a member as the DJ. And now, after a few ventures of his own—including a solo album—Bobcat was back. And he had a track he had made from the haunting choir sounds of a Sly and the Family Stone loop and a “Funky Drummer” backbone. Marley Marl might have been on the driver’s seat from a production standpoint, but Bobcat gets primary credit for delivering the sonic bombast to set up LL with the opening bar:

Don’t call it a comeback; I’ve been here for years!

It’s the most defiant and paradoxical line ever uttered in rap history—right before LL Cool J proceeds to mete out four verses of verbal pummeling to all the adversaries who had written him off as finished. “Mama Said Knock You Out” became the centerpiece and namesake of LL’s comeback trail. But two tracks do not an album make; 12 more tracks eventually made the final cut, contributing to making Mama Said Knock You Out a tour de force that arguably captured LL at the peak of his powers.

The whole affair kicks off in grand style, with LL revisiting the teenage years of Radio. The B-Boy is back in “The Boomin’ System,” only that this time, he can afford much more than a crude “ghetto blaster”. Oh no, his “ghetto blaster” is now an advanced car stereo, putting the sonic power of that archaic boom box to shame. Marley Marl has those thundering bass kicks to go along with the rapid snares, and laces it all up with a thick bassline, an echoing funk guitar, and a constantly looped LL lyric for the chorus: “Cars ride by with the booming system!” You can feel LL driving around the neighborhood in his Jeep, “shaking, vibrating and rattling” his trunk by “pumping up the funky beat.” At one point, Marley Marl strips away the other sounds to fully expose the most sampled breakbeat of all time in its naked glory, while LL raps “I got the ‘Funky Drummer’ drumming.” Genius.

Now the Lover Man—who made his debut in Radio, perfected his craft in Bigger and Deffer, and faltered in Walking With a Panther—makes an appearance in “Around the Way Girl.” And based on the very descriptive lyrics, he’s very particular about the type of flavor he prefers.

I want a girl with extensions in her hair
Bamboo earrings, at least two pair
A Fendi bag and a bad attitude
[…]
She can walk with a switch and talk with street slang
[…]
She likes to dance to the rap jam
She sweet as brown sugar with the candied yams
Honey-coated complexion, using Camay…

“Around the Way Girl” might be the most understated ode to black women ever penned in rap history, and one of the most endearing at that. Marley Marl completes the process with a New Jack Swing-style beat and a Mary Jane Girls-inspired chorus to give it that highly danceable R&B sheen. Small wonder the single was a Top 5 R&B hit, and eventually cracked the Billboard Top 10 at #9. Nice job.

“Eat ‘Em Up L Chill” is up next, which brings back the side of LL his fans know all too well: the Braggart. Marley Marl has the steel drums running at a mid-tempo pace, with a few guitar licks here and there to amplify the barrage of LL’s verbal punches: “I daze and amaze, my display’s a phase / Every phrase is a maze as Uncle L slays!”

Amazingly, LL is not irritating, much unlike in Walking With a Panther. LL ends the song with a few shout-outs to a few industry friends, and then he reaches for a character that he had created in Walking With a Panther’s “I’m That Type of Guy” and “Big Ole Butt”: the Nasty Boy. “Mr. Goodbar” is pure metaphor ecstasy, likening, um, a certain appendage of his to candy delight: “Come and get this ice-cream cone / Or I’ll deliver it when your daddy ain’t home.” Another breakbeat, punctured by sporadic stabs of bass and coated by faint siren-esque sounds is all that LL needs from Marley Marl. Hershey’s never sounded sweeter.

Then it’s the more ferocious version of the Braggart that storms in: the Lyrical Warrior. Thank goodness Marley Marl was on deck to provide him with the sonic backdrop needed for his enterprise of doom. “Don’t go near the speakers,” LL mutters amidst a clever blend of crowd noises. Everyone has been warned—a breakbeat with the ferocity and pace of a typhoon kicks in, almost overwhelming LL. Thankfully, he’s up to the challenge, as he swiftly spits bar after bar in his “Murdergram”:

When I'm on the microphone, I want silence
Let KRS-One stop the violence
Ain't no rivals, ain't no competition
Punk, I'm beatin' you into submission
I'm gettin' busier than ever before
Never more will I slack; I'ma keep it real raw

The four-minute musical mayhem then tapers off into a simple mid-tempo funk tune as the Introspectionist makes his debut in “Cheesy Rat Blues.” Here LL weaves a first-person narrative about a wealthy man who falls on hard times and despondently finds out that he had fairweather friends all along. Heck, they might have not been friends at all to begin with! The story is actually autobiographical, inspired by the rough period surrounding Walking With a Panther. For the first time, the world is let into the recesses of LL’s heart.

And now, for the weakest moment in the album. Granted, the Benefactor means well. He had emerged from his humble beginnings, and now he’s putting on his friends as he had promised. But everything about “Farmers Blvd. (Our Anthem)” sounds average. The braggadocio raps from the four guys are average. The slow beat, peppered with a cluster of piano notes here and a guitar lick there, is average. And the fact that these guys are named Bomb, Big Money, Grip, and Hic should have been a forewarning. No wonder nothing has been heard from them on wax since. Thankfully, the previously discussed “Mama Said Knock You Out” shows up next to redeem that lackluster moment with pure adrenaline.

And yes, he makes out time to send a few shots toward you-know-who: “And when I pull out my jammy, get ready ‘cause it might go *blaaaow*! / How ya like me now?”

We’ll cover Kool Moe Dee a little later.

After the brazen scratching of “Rock the Bells” closes the explosive title track, yet another side of LL makes his debut: the Punster. “Milky Cereal” is generally hilarious as LL Cool J uses names of various cereals to create a story about his romantic (and sexual) adventures. Marley Marl makes the music simple, with nothing but a rolling drum loop and faint bass daggers to shove LL’s verses up front. A little kooky, but not bad.

A more playful version of the Braggart shows up for the previously mentioned “Remixed But Still Jingling” track, before the Lyrical Warrior barges in for the third and last time. He isn’t quite done yet. There are three people he needs to beat the living daylights out of—figuratively, of course. And to utterly humiliate them, he’s not going to dedicate a song to each of them; oh no, they aren’t worth the dignity. Rather, he’s going to diss them all with just one song: “To da Break of Dawn.”

Three or multiple people dissed on one song? “Takeover,” meet your ancestor.

Initially thought to be down and out with the power punch that was Kool Moe Dee’s “Let’s Go,” LL had picked himself up from the canvas, and now—armed with a sweet James Brown-fueled beat—he is letting the bespectacled one have it.

And got the nerve to have them Star Trek shades on!

As the audacious braggart who had implied that he was better than LL in 1988’s “Let’s Get It Started,” M.C. Hammer is LL’s second victim. Then again, LL takes it relatively easy on him. After all, the poor guy was hardly the lyrical heavyweight he claimed he was.

However, the gloves are totally off when it’s Ice-T’s turn. Oh, LL was going to make him pay for those Power disses. He claims that his then-girlfriend Danielle, who was infamously photographed front and rear with a bikini on the Power album inserts, was the major reason the album sold “a few copies.” (It went gold.) It surely was not because of his rhymes, as they were too “sloppy” to give him any commercial viability. Thus, LL ends the song with a scathing couplet:

Here's five dollars, catch a taxi cab
Take your rhymes around the corner to the rap rehab

Understandably Ice-T never replied to that knockout blow.

The Lover Man appears again, this time with “6 Minutes of Pleasure.” It’s a more relaxing New Jack Swing-esque beat, with the requisite choral singing and LL employing a specialized cadence for his role as a patient lover. It’s nothing overtly spectacular, just something to quietly absorb.

Things go up in tempo again as the frenetic drums and organs of “Illegal Search” kick in. Now this is a guy everyone was looking for in Walking With a Panther: the Socially Conscious One. Racial profiling—or more specifically, Driving While Black—is the theme here. But unlike N.W.A. with “F**k tha Police” and Boogie Down Productions with “Who Protects Us From You?,”  LL relies on the justice system to vindicate him. It’s amazing what money can do for someone, but perhaps he was trying to show that institutionalized racism is not as pervasive as his peers claimed, which is a welcome counterpoint.

LL Cool J closes things out with the less weighty “The Power of God,” a general statement of upliftment over a slow burn of twanging guitars and solemn humming from a female vocalist. As he says “Peace!”, the music fades into silence to end this sixty-two minute journey.

LL Cool J’s mission of hard work paid off. Mama Said Knock You Out’s title track peaked at #17 on the Billboard Hot 100, went platinum, and won him his first Grammy. In addition to peaking at #9, “Around the Way Girl” went gold, and “The Booming System” peaked at #48. And the album itself was certified double Platinum and virtually put LL back in the critics’ good graces.

Mama Said Knock You Out is not so much a genre-defining album as it is a culture- and career-defining album. Hardly any rugged hip hop fan would place it among the absolute top-tier of greatest rap LPs. The album wasn’t revolutionary—or at least it didn’t exactly move the rap genre forward from a stylistic standpoint. It’s just seen as a masterful piece of work that brought back LL to prominence. And that’s the true beauty of this album; it proved that in such a young musical realm where you were lucky to make it past your third album, you could still gain a second wind.

Mama Said Knock You Out still stands as the quintessential comeback album, backed by the production overlordship of Marley Marl and the effortless merging of the rapper’s multiple dimensions. It’s a record that would be the first of many self-reinventions in LL’s career that would, unfortunately, become the cause of the fluctuating quality of his music as the ’90s progressed. But ultimately, this is LL’s ultimate triumph, his commercial and critical zenith.

And his grandmother must have been awfully proud of him for that.