Run-D.M.C. was the first rap act to produce cohesive, fully realized albums, and
LL Cool J was the first to follow in their footsteps.
LL was a mere 17 years old when he recorded his classic debut album
Radio, a brash, exuberant celebration of booming beats and B-boy attitude that launched not only the longest career in hip-hop, but also
Rick Rubin's seminal
Def Jam label.
Rubin's back-cover credit ("Reduced by
Rick Rubin") is an entirely apt description of his bare-bones production style.
Radio is just as stripped-down and boisterously aggressive as any
Run-D.M.C. album, sometimes even more so; the instrumentation is basically just a cranked-up beatbox, punctuated by DJ scratching. There are occasional brief samples, but few do anything more than emphasize a downbeat. The result is rap at its most skeletal, with a hard-hitting, street-level aggression that perfectly matches
LL's cocksure teenage energy. Even the two ballads barely sound like ballads, since they're driven by the same slamming beats. Though they might sound a little squared-off to modern ears,
LL's deft lyrics set new standards for MCs at the time; his clever disses and outrageous but playful boasts still hold up poetically. Although even
LL himself would go on to more intricate rhyming, it isn't really necessary on such a loud, thumping adrenaline rush of a record.
Radio was both an expansion of rap's artistic possibilities and a commercial success (for its time), helping attract new multiracial audiences to the music. While it may take a few listens for modern ears to adjust to the minimalist production, the fact that it hews so closely to rap's basic musical foundation means that it still possesses a surprisingly fresh energy, and isn't nearly as dated as many efforts that followed it (including, ironically, some of
LL's own). ~ Steve Huey
