LL Cool J Reflects on His Musical Career: 'Hip-Hop Needs to Be Served on a Silver Platter' (Exclusive)

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LL Cool J stepped onto the scene and the hip-hop pioneer isn't going anywhere. ET spoke with the 2021 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, who looked back at his legacy as one of the earliest rappers to achieve commercial success and reflected on what's to come with his new music and acting career.LL Cool J recalled being a fan of the genre and other rappers from a tender age. «I was already rapping at that time because [if] you're a fan, you rapping and stuff, but [I was] maybe about 10, 11 or 12 [when] I started writing,» he shares.The rapper credited his upbringing in New York City for his famed style, telling ET how his neighbors fostered children from different boroughs who would share their cassette tapes with him.«So I was eight, nine years old, listening to [the Cold Crush Brothers], all this stuff.

Guys would hear me hearing and because they like my voice they're like, 'Rap that part!' And I'd start rapping,» he recalls, adding that he would also request tapes from his grandmother for him to rap along to. «It was just an amazing time, was like magic.»LL Cool J spent the majority of his childhood in Queens with his mother and grandparents, whom the rapper contributes much of his humility and determination to. «My grandmother was a trip, you know?

I was taught humility is a superpower, basically,» he says, reflecting on the lessons he grew up with, growing up middle-class and Catholic in the '90s. «If a task is once begun, never leave it till it's done.

Be thy labor great or small. Do it well or not at all. That's the mantra I grew up with,» the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors recipient shares. «I pass that on to my kids.