LL Cool J: ‘You don’t lose the flow. It’s like Prince playing a guitar, Mick Jagger singing songs onstage’

LL Cool J: ‘You don’t lose the flow. It’s like Prince playing a guitar, Mick Jagger singing songs onstage’ At 56, the rapper from Queens, a fundamental part of hip-hop’s evolution, is now a living legend and a TV star whose new album ‘The FORCE’ features illustrious collaborators For years, he’s been a certified celebrity, universally acknowledged as one of the most important and decisive figures in the history of hip-hop , with a longevity that beats out that of any other rapper in the game. Born as James Todd Smith in New York City in 1968, he had a turbulent childhood, not so much due to economic circumstance — he grew up in a middle-class environment in Queens — as to experiences of serious domestic violence.

At four years old, he witnessed his father nearly kill his mother and grandfather at gunpoint . After his parents’ divorce, things hardly improved: his mom’s next boyfriend submitted him to constant physical and mental abuse. But the man now known as LL Cool J (an abbreviation of “Ladies Love Cool James,” a nickname given to him by fellow rapper Mikey D) has never exploited this tragic chapter in his life story.

To the contrary, he’s invested nearly all his energy in celebrating how rap saved him from it. By the end of the 1970s, hip-hop culture had exploded on the streets of the Bronx and reached those of Queens. Young James found himself at the right place at the right time.

He began to rap at the age of nine, and it opened his eyes to.