LL COOL J – "Ain't Nobody"

I bought ‘Love Rollercoaster’ instead. Backed w/ Englebert Humperdinck’s ‘Lesbian Seagull’! What a tune.

not quite a “Living Doll” style novelty record” but there was that version of I Got You Babe with Cher from a B&B compilation in 1993. Charted at 35 according to wikipedia (but was a top10-hit in the Netherlands).

I don’t remember this tune at all…

I nearly did myself a mischief laughing at this in the cinema (aged 15), but I’d barely seen any of the TV show as I only ever got to watch MTV at my mate Shim’s house, so perhaps I was still ‘fresh’ to it? I can’t remember when they started showing it on Channel 4 but IIRC they cut out a load of the video-crit bits due to licensing beef. I saw TONS of episodes of Daria when that got syndicated on Five though. Daria was basically amazing in all respects except for Actual Daria herself who was sulky and rubbish.

Verging on the pointless rather than the dreadful. I’d completely forgotten about this; probably the most annoying aspect is that the singing in the chorus is not up to Chaka Khan’s grade . An odd interruption into Popular in so many ways (still: even odder to note is that LL Cool J’s biggest chart hits as main artist were not until 2005 and 2006) – quite some longevity of career there. Still, I would stick to “Around The Way Girl”. 4

bland blah redeemed by the original ‘Ain’t nobody’ melody – I liked LL Cool J enough to buy a single by him in the late 80s but this passed me by. I now associate him more with his role in NCIS: Los Angeles

I suppose if one of Rap’s elder statesmen is going to get a UK #1 it would have to be LL Cool J, but “Ain’t Nobody”, for all its commercial sheen is meagre fare, compared to “Phenomenon” with its killer hook and “White Lines” lift from late ’97 or the scorching “4.3.2.1.” with DMX, Redman, Method Man and Canibus from the “Phenomenon” album. And his earlier stuff, “I’m Bad” and “Rock The Bells” were essential cuts alongside Run DMC and Public Enemy’s output from over 10 years earlier. He deserves recognition on Popular for a long and varied career, as well as being one of Rap’s enablers. It’s just a shame that the only positive thing I’m hearing on “Ain’t Nobody” is that borrowed bassline. Otherwise, there’s nothing vital or exciting. Did Alphonse Ribiero cameo on the video? ISTR it’s a Hip Hop comes to Center Parcs type thing.

I don’t recall seeing the Beavis & Butthead movie, but I do recall “Love Rollercoaster”, on heavy repeat on MTV.

Actually, now that I think about this some more, it’s interesting… “Doin’ It” and “Loungin'” had a similar impact on me in 1996 as B&B did in 1994 – they seemed “adult,” and like something I didn’t want my parents to catch me watching. “Doin’ It” in particular is this wonderful marriage of a smooth groove, sharp delivery, and sort of creepy, unquestionably erotic video that together imply more raunch than can actually be found in the lyrics. Boy, would that have made a fine #1, though I have to admit it would be deflated considerably were the video interrupted by cartoon antics and a spliced-in “Huh-huh.”

The best live show I have ever seen was LL Cool J supported by Eric B and Rakim and Public Enemy, at the Hammersmith Odeon in November 1987. He was not yet 20; I was a couple of years older, and my friends and I were probably the oldest people in the audience. The crowd was absolutely volcanic – it’s the noise you hear at the beginning of ‘It Takes a Nation of Millions’ – and I am sure the closest I will ever come to Beatlemania or ‘Rock Around the Clock’.

Even then, it was clear they were a mismatched package: Public Enemy were militants, Eric B and Rakim were artists, and LL Cool J was an entertainer. For now, hip-hop was still young enough for its borders to be fluid, and the three of them could share an audience. ‘I Need Love’, which got to number 8 that year, had provoked some accusations of selling out – it was Britain’s first romantic rap hit, I think – and it was already clear in which direction LL’s career was heading. (Its success was also responsible for much of the crowd’s excitement, of course.)

‘I Need Love’ is a much better record than ‘Ain’t Nobody’, though: fresh and inventive rather than old and tired. LL was still not yet 30 when AN came out, but it felt like he’d been around for a very long time.

I wouldn’t begrudge him any of his success. Thanks largely to NCIS, I suppose, he is a now a luminary of the American pop establishment, hosting the Grammys for the past two years. But it’s impossible for me to see his career as anything other than a decades-long decline from that one perfect moment in Hammersmith.

yeah ll by this point wasn’t quite put out to pasture, he was still a legit enough figure that an up and comer like canibus could seek to establish himself by calling him out and ppl could hope said calling out might inspire him to be the rapper he was before we knew what he looked like w/o a hat on (and he approached this kinda w/ ‘4,3,2,1’). the eye of the tiger though was gone and he was effectively already the ll of ncis:la, the ll of ‘going back to cali’ was gone. it’s interesting you can mark this w/ ‘ain’t nobody’ – the original had very very prominent placement in breakin’, part of a wave of mainstream hollywood cash-ins of early hip-hop culture (alongside beat street, krush groove, and of course the quickly generated sequel breakin’ 2: electric boogaloo) . the movie is generally awful (george michael and moz otm about that at least) but it does manage to capture some elements of the first old school at the moment it was becoming old school and yielding to the new school, something that if you wanted to attach a specific event to mark it a very strong candidate might be the release of the first def jam single – ‘i need a beat’ – which was also the debut single of one ll cool j. 5.

The fantastically visceral “Mama Said Knock You Out”, and of course “Doin’ It”, are both great LL Cool J singles, but this one ain’t, its only redeemable quality being the great sample from the Rufus & Chaka Khan version. The latter only made it to #8 in the UK charts, but would probably have earned a 7 or 8 from me, partly for Chaka Khan’s vocal delivery, glaringly absent from LL’s remix. Obvious credit to Rufus’s Hawk Wolinski for the great synth work.

Still, it’s interesting how this kind of lush mid-1990s hip hop production – also visible the year prior “Doin’ It” and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s US #1 “Tha Crossroads” – prefigures the recent turn towards reverb-heavy “cloud rap” that many would have you believe is wholly original.

Wait – what? Toxygene for to number #4? I’m frankly amazed because while it’s parent album isn’t as blah as some of the subsequent Orb releases, I thought this was when a certain Orb-by-numbers started creeping in – at least compared to the wonderfully chaotic Orbus Terrarum album.

Being in Australia I never had a clue of where the Orb sat in the musical conscience of their home. I’m pleased they got another burst of recognition.

As for LL – I’ll have to go and hear it again. I can’t remember a thing about it.

Always found it unusual that both The Orb and Orbital had their two biggest hits within weeks of each other, both in early 1997. Neither their most remembered though and both simply taking advantage of the low January-February single sales.

*ahem*

This is a perfectly perfunctory version of a decent enough song, and because it’s not quite my thing, I’ll give it four. I can’t help but think that, were I a fan of hip-hop, it might have got an extra point or two on the grounds of “blimey! It’s LL Cool J at Number One!”

Beavis and Butthead, though…ahhh, for any provincial teenager who liked Rock music in the fallow years between Cobain’s suicide and something kinda bunnyable, they were great. I rather liked the ‘plot’ bits of their shows, but it’s the videos that stand out.

The one’s I remember best were:

“Creep” by Radiohead (If you didn’t have the part that sucked, you wouldn’t have the cool bit)

“Mouth For War” by Pantera (The only thing cooler than bands who get chicks are bands that scare chicks).

“November Spawned a Monster” by Morrissey (Quit whining, you wuss).

Some unknown country track (Country music’s cool when it’s about drinking whiskey and kicking ass).

I loved the film, saw it with a couple of mates in the cinema when it came out. Contrary to the metalhead/rocker stereotype (which we kinda knew B&B perpetuated but we didn’t care), the 15-year-olds turned into an engineer, a reporter (albeit casual) for a national newspaper and a Cambridge graduate who does something that no one really understands, but makes him a shedload.

Only slightly odd thing about this as the soundtrack’s lead off single – B&B liked rap, but they would’ve possibly turned it over in favour of something more rocking.

@25 – If Satan had placed a couple of places higher, then the ‘Dance Music Doesn’t Have To Be Shit’ Trilogy of ’96 would’ve been the ‘Dance Music Doesn’t Have To Be Shit’ Quadrilogy (is that the right word?) of ’96/’97…but then (I think) we wouldn’t have ever had Your Woman at number one…and that one meant something.

You would have thought that the obvious big hit single from the soundtrack of Beavis And Butthead Do America would have been the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Love Rollercoaster” with its seemingly irresistible B-side of Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Lesbian Seagull,” but while that did well enough, the now nearly forgotten biggest hit from the film turned out to be L.L.’s equivalent of “My Ding-A-Ling.” Just as the Light Programme of the fifties avoided Chuck Berry like the plague, and the Ohio Players’ original “Love Rollercoaster” – an American number one – flopped completely in a Britain more intent on sending drivel like “Barbados” and “Combine Harvester” to the top, so “Rock The Bells,” a literal beginning of time and perhaps the loudest such in pop since “Maybelline,” was ignored by most of our radio stations and nearly all of the music press. The first two L.L. Cool J. albums – Radio (1985) and Bigger And Deffer (1987) – remain touchstones for nearly all of the hip hop that followed and still sound raw and revolutionary today. Thereafter he became rap’s Van Morrison, issuing endless streams of largely indifferent records out of which you could make a highly listenable seventy-minute CD, though Mama Said Knock You Out (1990), 14 Shots To The Dome (1993) and 10 (2002) all have their moments of iridescent brilliance.

“Ain’t Nobody” was his flat take on the old Rufus standard and inaugurated one of the more regrettable trends of Popular 1997; eighties karaoke rap, familiar hits with inoffensive but urgent-sounding platitudes hollered in a rush to reassure a slowly ageing audience scared by those new-fangled Wu-Tang fellows (yet another imbalance which TPL will put right). Remarks such as “throw your butterscotch body beneath the red light” indicate that I will never be the right kind of listener for this sort of thing, no matter how proudly L.L. cites “When Doves Cry” or The Road Less Travelled; the number one-ensuring hook of “You can take it girl, stop runnin’, uh” inspires many adjectives in my mind, none of which is “forgivable.” When he belches out the line “I’ll give you a full plunge, uhhhhhhh,” I have sudden visions of Robin Askwith in Confessions Of A Plumber (and if there is no such film, then there oughtn’t to have been one). The closing “I Feel For You” parody is akin to rubbing sulphuric acid into the wound. At least “My Ding-A-Ling” was both good humoured and funny. Business as usual with Popular 1997, then; when the number ones are good, they are very good indeed – but when they are bad, they are truly diabolical. I had to listen to “Go Cut Creator Go” six times in a row afterwards to cleanse my soul, and learn about dignity, and, um, stuff.

Other than the chorus I had no recollection of this at all and even after 1 play a few minutes ago I’m struggling to remember it.

A very dull chart-topper.Not fit to lace Chaka Khans boots. LL Cool J and his Mr, Loverman act here is not endearing in the slightest. 4 is about right.

Phenomenom would have been a far more interesting Number 1.

The only thing that stands out is what looks like Alfonso Ribeiro (Carlton in the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – the bunny will be looking for his memory eraser) in the video.They did a lightweight sitcom called ‘In the House’ in the late 90s which was shown a fair bit over here and that I suppose is my lasting memory of LL Cool J and David Baddiel claiming that LL was short for Lionel Lionel!

Havent heard much of the early work except for ‘I Need Love’ which is ok. I know Tom also had “Mama Said Knock You Out” on the best hits of the 90s. His later stuff like ‘Control Myself’ with J Lo was terrible.

#29 Rap’s Van Morrison – Brilliant!

I have no clear memory of this at all. I was still mostly writing about hip-hop at this time, but LL was a distant irrelevance to the state of the art at the time – you could count about six or seven eras of the genre that fit in the time between his blazing arrival* and this… My favourite single of his remains Going Back To Cali. There have been occasional bright moments in later years (unlike Ciaran, I like Control Myself).

*Rock The Bells and Go Cut Creator Go are awesome in themselves, but also educational for people who didn’t realise the link between Jay-Z’s 99 Problems and hip-hop history.

#18 – I feel something similar about the much-covered ‘You Got The Love’. Each time I ask myself, do I really want to hear another version of this huffing, puffing repetitive drag of a non-song, and now Coca-Cola have got a kiddies choir to sing it, great!

#35 – I have a love/hate relationship with You Got The Love. I think there’s only one truly brilliant version of it, and sorry to the purists but for me it’s the 1997 mix. The original ’91 mix is too minimal for my tastes (to be fair it’s essentially just a mashup of an old vocal with an old early house track), the 2006 re-remix is just a slightly subdued and inferior version of the ’97 mix…and then there’s Florence’s version which I *really* hate, which took a promising solo act (her first album is excellent) and began her descent into cheesy, commercial chart-friendly bollocks. Seeing her cavort around in videos to a pounding Calvin Harris beat a few years later seemed like such a waste of an initially brilliant talent, an act who started off sounding completely different to anything else in the charts ending up sounding exactly the same as everything else. See also D***** R***** in about a decade’s time. Also it annoys me how a whole generation now think it’s a Florence original, similar to Ellie Goulding’s (not bunnied!) Your Song a year later.

But the 1997 Now Voyager mix is glorious, the only one that properly takes that epic vocal and gives it a backing to be proud of.

I just listened to Aint Nobody and it doesn’t register in my memory at all.

I do remember my hatred of Beavis and Buthead but fans I knew soon put it away once it was replaced by South Park as the unorthodox/edgy/whatever animation of choice. Even I watched South Park.

Re: The Orb and “Toxygene”. According to Wikipedia- with sources, to be fair- it had started out as a remix of Jean-Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene 8” (from the recently-released sequel to “Oxygene”), but Jarre had rejected it because it bore too little resemblance to the original- they’d disassembled the original and reduced it to a few isolated samples. So perhaps it’s not the case that they consciously set to create an “Orb” record.

That said, what was it with the 90s and “remixes” that bore virtually no resemblance to the alleged source anyway? Nothing against sampling if it’s done creatively, but there’s a point at which you’re no longer offering a different take or perspective on the original track- an unrecognisably out-of-context two second sample of the original looped over a generic and repetitive dance backing where any claim to *be* the original is pure marketing rather than artistic reinvention (c.f. the “D’Still’d”/”Distilled” mix of Space’s “Female of the Species” which *was* the main track on the 12″ release). I get the impression that in many cases, any samples of the “original” existed purely to justify the connection with the source, the equivalent of the tiny percentage required for a cheap soft drink to claim “contains real fruit juice!”

CD singles were often full of these- in the typical “two part” release, one version usually had two or three new “B side” tracks and the other contained remixes of the main track by “name” producers.

I vaguely remember reading an interview in the NME or Melody Maker where some fairly well-known producer/DJ of the time (forget who) said he’d been commissioned to remix a track for some rock band (might have been U2- again, my memory is hazy). Apparently they completely forgot about it until the time came to deliver, at which point they basically grabbed some completely unrelated track they’d been working on off the shelf and handed it over.

That having been during the 90s, I can quite believe it.

Mostro – How would you feel about Jazz covers in the vein of EG John Coltrane’s My Favourite Things?

42: I recall that as well, and I’m fairly sure the band in question was The Lemonheads. I also remember that a few weeks beforehand Curve had been in the same pages, gushing about a remix he’d done for them – “we can’t work out where he took the sample from” – but didn’t seem quite so smart once he’d pulled back the curtain.

It’s a shame the Rufus and Chaka Khan original only got to #8 in 1984, that would be a solid 10.

As much as I want to say this is a bit lazy/pointless, I don’t find this totally without appeal. A generous 6/10 from me.