Consumer Guide Album

L.L. Cool J: The Force [Def Jam/Virgin Music Group/LL Cool J, 2024]
Never the most cerebral rapper, LL tried to trade in music on an acting career that seldom ventured beyond NCIS: Los Angeles. So let's be glad that when he rides in on his first full album in over a decade, he has the sense to lean on Q-Tip's production if also the hope that capping the opening "This is my manifesto/The reason why I did it/The press will call me evil/And label me a menace/Don't let their lies deceive you/They pushed me to my limit/Racism's a disease/It's only right I kill it" by going on to hope that writing the first rap song ever to rhyme "specific" and "horrific" will help him achieve that all too elusive goal. Better that later he pays his respects to African sculpture, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Huey Newton, the Last Poets, Kurt Cobain, and, well, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. A-