LL Cool J would’ve never gotten his start in music had it not been for the drum machine his mother got for him.
LL Cool J is one of the greats in hip-hop. But he would’ve never gotten his start in music had it not been for the drum machine his mother got for him from her tax refund.
During his recent appearance on Sway in the Morning, LL explained the purpose of including the line in his new song and how his mother impacted his inception into hip-hop, which was a new music genre at the time.
“Here’s this Black woman who worked really hard, who got a tax return — and just for the record — the majority of people with a lot of money don’t like tax season,” he explained. “So if you like tax season, you got some work to do and that’s okay… So, my mother loved tax season. My mother said, ‘Yo, I’m going to get my tax return.’ She had other things to do.”
The rapper/actor recalls all the rejection letters he received when he was trying to get his career started and would send out demo tapes to a variety of labels, including the infamous Sugar Hill Records.
“My mother found a letter and she came in there, and I’m in the room and I’m just sulking… and she’s like, ‘What’s wrong?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t have no equipment. I can’t make my music right,’” LL Cool J said.
“So she just happened to get her tax return and she went, she said, ‘What kind of drum machine do you want?’ She surprised me, she went and bought me one. She bought me the wrong one, but she bought me one.”
LL released his first album in 1985, which included his hit “I Can’t Live Without My Radio.” He was the first rap artist to get more than ten consecutive platinum-plus-selling albums. He went on to release many hip-hop classics, including “Radio,” “Mama Said Knock You Out,” “Doin’ It,” Loungin’,” and “Around The Way Girl.”
“That’s ’cause my mother with her tax return. My mother, I love her so much, and that was [an] incredible moment for me,” he told Sway.
Source: Black Enterprise
