Review:
“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 [born James Todd Smith] was a mere 17 years old when he recorded his classic debut album Radio, a brash, exuberant celebration” (Huey) of “big beats, small scratches, verbal agility and a whole lot of B-boy attitude” (Blender). “It’s raw and often verbose, but also highly effective” (Blender). With it, LL scored a “debut album platinum and kick-start[ed] the Def Jam hip-hop dynasty” (Blender).
Radio “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” (Huey).
“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)” (Huey).
Review Source(s):
Blender Magazine’s 100 Greatest American Albums (10/08)
1 million
--
1 million
