LL Cool J Once Revealed He Wrote His Hit Song ‘I Need Love’ in Five Minutes
Rapper and actor LL Cool J has been one of the rap industry’s biggest artists since his debut in the 80s. He’s maintained this long career of his by writing several hit songs in the decades he’s been in the business.
But perhaps one of the rapper’s biggest hit songs was written in just five minutes.
How LL Cool J became a rapper
LL Cool J became one of hip-hop’s most mainstream artists back when the rap industry was just growing out of its infancy. He’d been preparing for his success at an early age, already penning lyrics when he was a child.
“I’ve been writing since I was nine years old, and when I was 11 my grandfather bought me a whole lot of equipment. A whole lot of musical equipment. $2,000’s worth,” he once said in an interview posted by LL Cool J Archive.
From there, the Grammy-winner began to grow his musical abilities until he felt ready to transform his hobby into a profession.
“I started off as a young rapper, not doing anything. Wrote lyrics, wrote a lot of lyrics. Then I started sending tapes in to every record company. I went to a record store and I got all the rap records. And I took the addresses off the rap records and sent a tape to every record company. Every record company that was using rap at that time,” he added.
Eventually, after several rejections, Def Jam co-founder at the time Rick Rubin called LL to give him the opportunity of rap stardom.
LL Cool J wrote ‘I Need Love’ in five minutes
“I Need Love” was a record off of LL Cool J’s sophomore album Bigger and Deffer. The record was a hit when it came out in 1987, reaching the 14th spot on the Billboard Hot 100. It also helped the album it was featured on go platinum.
LL Cool J was no stranger to doing love ballads in his music. As he pointed out on Interview Magazine, his debut album came with several of them.
“I did a couple of love ballads on my first album—‘I Want You’ and ‘I Can Give You More.’ They didn’t have as much music, so people didn’t really consider them ballads. I like ballads. It’s a part of me. My name is L.L., which stands for ‘Ladies’ Love,'” he said.
While writing one of the biggest hits of his career, the NCIS actor claimed it took very little time.
“The music came first. I went home, listened to the track, and it took five minutes to write the lyrics,” he said.
LL described his writing process as schizophrenic. His diverse records reflected the many feelings or desires he was experiencing at the time he wrote particular lyrics.
“When I wrote ‘I Need Love’ I needed it. I didn’t need it the next day, but I needed it when I wrote it. When I wrote ‘I’m Bad’ I was bad. So I’m many different characters. When I wrote ‘My Rhyme Ain’t Done’ I was tripping out in fantasy land and I went into television, The Honeymooners, and looked at Alice’s behind,” he said.
LL Cool J felt ‘I Need Love’ paved the way for Drake
“I Need Love” experienced quite a bit of controversy when LL debuted the track. Being that it was a love ballad, the multi-platinum artist ended up getting some flack because of the song’s content. In an era where the nature of hip-hop music was primarily aggressive, “I Need Love” initially stood out.
“At first it was a lot of friction because, you gotta remember, hip hop was — and still is to a certain extent — but back then, it was really conservative and if the energy wasn’t testosterone, like I’m punching you in your face, kicking the door down, you don’t get a lot of credit,” he once told Complex. “In hip hop, you only get brownie points for creativity within certain parameters… When you try to go outside of that box, if it’s anything that’s not considered 1000% street, [you get] no credit.”
But with the success of the record, the Any Given Sunday actor believed he made it easier for a newer generation of rappers to branch out like he did. Rappers like Drake and Fabolous were just a few he might have inspired.
“We’re very different artists because I have a lot of hard records and I’m very diverse,” he said. “But in that aspect of my career, it paved the way for guys like that… who I’m happy for. I like a lot of his music to.”
