Quintessential Sounds of Summertime 4

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

LL Cool J- Around The Way Girl/ Loungin [Who Do Ya Luv] (Feat Total)-All World Greatest Hits


It should be no secret by now but the soundtrack to my childhood was heavily urban; walking to school, riding a bike, getting my ass whooped, yes, all these activities where scored by various artists of the hip-hop and R&B genres. I was all about taping songs off the radio [a precursor to Itunes] and coping me a cassingle from time to time. Yes, in the words of Ms. Nefertiti Lovelace, 'a fucking cassingle.' Best believe I had these two tracks on a tape.
Nowadays Ladies Love Cool J has become a bit of a one trick pony to some, he's either taking his shirt off [oh god not again], ripping his shirt off [oh god not again], or being all syrupy [oh god not again] with yet another single where instead of following mom's demand to knock you out, he wants to hold you down or something. [Oh wait, is that a J.Lo/Fat Joe track? Whatever it's in the same vein.] Now I am not saying a slow jam rap track is evil cause when it's done right, it's goes down like droplets of Cristal from the hair to the face to the breasts and so on. Yeah.... Take that. Take that.
With these two tracks LL got it right and the come ons felt genuine ["she's sweet as brown sugar with the candy yams"], brand new, and at the time were a change of pace from the brotha who pledged to knock you out before going back to Cali. That hook on Around The Way is just silky and demands to be repeated, as is the case with the hook from the then ubiquitous Loungin feat those forgotten Bad Boy vixens Kim, Keisha, and Pam. [a.k.a. Total]. The beat is loud and heavy with a slight hint of New Jack, but loudness here does not mean overbearing, instead it means bass heavy and complementary, coming together with LL's come hither, 'bet ya man can't do it like me' lyrics to groove you as you sit back and watch the man in action. The same thing goes with Around the Way Girl. True hip-hop heads may dismiss these tracks and choose to highlight the grit that made LL a force to be recokened with in his early days, [especially considering the similarities shared between many of his post year 2000 slow jam raps] but there once was a time where the idea was novel and a break from the grit resulted in genuine and refreshing takes on what it is like when a "gangsta" takes a stab at love.