Scant months after Q-Tip publicly debated the dubiousness of an “adult-contemporary hip-hop” class on social media comes a totally Tip-produced new album by his Queens neighbor LL Cool J—the 56-year-old rapper-actor’s 14th since his 1984 debut as a youngster. In a 12 months when each Rakim and Masta Ace launched new initiatives, when Widespread teamed with producer Pete Rock for a stellar throwback album of Nineties-spirited hip-hop, LL’s new effort joins a pattern. “Name it conventional hip-hop,” Q-Tip tweeted.

The FORCE doesn’t nod to trendy drill or lure, nor are there classic boom-bap beats to be heard. Nonetheless lyrically aggressive after 39 years of rhyming, Q-Tip modernizes LL’s sound for individuals who’d really wish to stream a brand new LL Cool J album and offers them what they got here for: boastful brags (“Murdergram Deux” with Eminem), lover-man vibes (“Proclivities”) and a few old-school rap storytelling (“Spirit of Cyrus”). 

Pairing the nonetheless musclebound MC answerable for attractive classics like “Doin’ It” with the producer of A Tribe Referred to as Quest come-ons like “Electrical Leisure” appears nearly too on the nostril. And sure, in 2024, LL is a long-married grandpa. However we hardly even must droop our disbelief as he twists seductive rhymes round a synth line recalling Gary Numan on “Proclivities,” flirting with Saweetie about tonsil hockey and making panties drop. The FORCE is hardly LL’s grown-up 4:44 album. He’s the identical Farmers Boulevard superhero he’s all the time been and the album is best for it.

However LL does look again within the rearview. His first single launched Def Jam as a hip-hop label in ’84 — he identify drops the label’s co-founders Rick Rubin (on “Basquiat Power”) and Russell Simmons (on “Runnit Again”). Like Captain America revived from suspended animation, LL returns from 1994 to a recent world he by no means made on “30 Decembers” (“this world ain’t like I keep in mind,” he laments). When Nas friends on the spiritualist “Reward Him,” the Queensbridge rapper brings up the golden-age hip-hop style of sheepskin coats and Cazal eyeglasses.

The titular “FORCE” stands for “frequencies of actual artistic vitality” and the NCIS: Los Angeles star arguably will get his most artistic on “Black Code Suite.” He embodies a litany of African-American bona fides (“I’m the sound of Miles Davis, it’s unimaginable to bury me/The gradual pimp stroll, it’s unimaginable to rush me”), together with the spice in scorching sauce and tastebuds savoring sunflower seeds, ending with the repetitive declaration “I’m Black.” Title references to Huey P. Newton, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Cyrus of The Warriors match this system. If LL has executed nothing however craft his blackest album doable throughout the confines of pop-leaning hip-hop for parents, his mission is effectively completed.