Why LL Cool J decided to become a solo artist
Few know that rapper turned actor LL Cool J was actually part of a fairly unknown group before he decided to pursue a solo career, and upon leaving that group he became a star. However, he rarely speaks about the group as they held him back for quite a while during the early days of his career.
The most loyal golden-age rap music fans may be unaware of the group’s existence, but they effectively launched LL’s career by choosing a career in music. Founded by three teens from Queens in 1983, the collective may not even be a footnote in hip-hop’s book of legends. Still, The Extravagant 3 are far from irrelevant when one considers the pioneers it birthed, and they are wrongly overlooked but have ultimately been overshadowed by the success of LL.
LL Cool J joined the Extravagant 3 in the early 1980s because he wanted to move away from the street culture of New York and instead focus on a legal hustle that could help him rise out of the poverty cycle he was trapped in as a youth and music seemed to be the answer. In a 2015 interview with Queen Latifah, LL admitted that music was his calling. Although he had the option of becoming a street star in the illegal sense, the Extravagant 3 gave him a viable out.
Opening up about this, LL recalled, “Growing up, I wanted to make money. That was my thing. I didn’t get into music for money, because I really love music and I love entertainment. But as a young kid growing up in the ghetto, I definitely, without a doubt, wanted to be the guy with the nice car!”
He continued, “There was a point just when I was considering going in that direction, and that life, that my friend went to jail. Right at that moment. That was right before I made my very first album. And when he went to jail, it was kind of like a wake-up call for me, and I decided to channel all of that hunger and that desire into music.”
The reason LL Cool J decided to go solo is a strange one. Still, during an appearance on Oprah’s Master Class, the ‘Rock The Bells’ rhymer unveiled that his friends thought it was a lie when he returned and told them he had an opportunity to work with Rick Rubin, the monster behind Run-DMC.
Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys discovered LL Cool J after LL sent a tape to Def Jam. The headquarters at the time were still in Rubin’s NYU dorm room, but Rubin and the Beastie Boys members were impressed by LL’s skills and opened the door to him.
While speaking to Oprah, the Bigger & Deffer creator unveiled that his rap group used to think he was lying and that it was a dead-end, stating, “[Jay] Philpot used to take me to the parties. I remember when I was working, trying to get the record deal, and I finally got in contact with Rick Rubin, I used to tell Jay Philpot, ‘Yo, I got this guy Rick Rubin, and we’re going to go down, he wants me to go down and make a record. And [my rap group] used to always think I was lying.”
He spoke vaguely about The Extravagant 3, disclosing, “They used to think I exaggerated. One of the main reasons I ended up a solo rap artist is because the guys that were in my rap group didn’t believe me when I told them, ‘We got this opportunity with Rick Rubin. We could go down there and make a record.’ They didn’t believe me. So, I made it by myself.”