In a break from monotony after a self-imposed hiatus that has lasted well over a decade, LL Cool J is back in full effect with his new single Saturday Night Special. The rapper turned actor had the entire hip-hop community paying attention with his latest release, produced by Q-Tip and featuring some odd choices for guest verses with Fat Joe and Rick Ross, who are definitely nowhere in his league with lyricism, flow, and status.
While a lot of people are losing their minds over Saturday Night Special, at level best it’s unwashed booty stewing in the dirtiest chitterlings bleach won’t clean.
I’m not rolling with the nostalgia crowd grasping at straws of yesteryear hoping to get the LL Cool J back from 1993 or play into a fantasy about the merger of Def Jam’s signature lyricist meeting A Tribe Called Quest in their post moment in the sun; Q-Tip has flat out lost his touch on the production side of the musical bed. If you know his production catalog, you know he’s done far superior tracks than Saturday Night Special, and thus far this is the weakest, laziest one he’s done. He could have done better buying a royalty free pack from Loopmasters and sampling that.
The beat is an overengineered lo-fi four bar repetitive loop that feels like Q-Tip said the hell with it, opened up Udio, put a prompt in for the artificial intelligence to make a classic hip-hop sounding track with a screechy R&B bottom filled with the worst synths it could data mine from the Scarface soundtrack detuned and without breath, then sent to Fadr for mixing and mastering. What we are left with is an annoying song that doesn’t keep its word as LL Cool J barks on the verse, doesn’t seem to vibe like it should, and always pays us back sounding overtly dated in a bad way. Saturday Night Special just ain’t the song to leave on repeat if you want to avoid tinnitus, especially in the car, as there is no significant bump in the trunk but white noise that is excruciating to listen to past one verse, let alone two.
If ever there was a fake sounding hip-hop beat on a track, this one wins the bullshit award.
LL Cool J has always been lyrically at the top of his game, even when he’s doing more pop oriented work. As part hip-hop heartthrob churning out cuts about chasing chicks and getting the poonanny (i.e. You Jiggling Baby, Big Ole Butt, Round The Way Girl, Doin’ It, and Hey Lover) and part battle rapper going for the jugular (i.e. Jack The Ripper, I’m Bad, Mama Said Knock You Out, I Shot Ya, The Ripper Strikes Back, Any Given Sunday) Saturday Night Special feels like LL Cool J’s futile attempt to be a drill rapper with a non-catchy hip-hop beat with two of the lamest rappers to come out post the hip-hop evolution.
The first verse almost sounds like a bad homage to Alpo Martinez, whom LL Cool J was cool with back in the day, but then splits into some other business that doesn’t gel with Fat Joe or Rick Ross’ verses. For a cat that has been a hip-hop rapper since a teen it’s odd to hear Mr. Smith politic on street affairs since, as far as his hip-hop career has illustrated, he’s never been involved in. I can’t even tell if the song is trying to be a cautionary tale of woe or a delusion of drug dealing grandeur by the time all three say their peace in the verses. While LL Cool J refrains from discussing dope dealing outright, that doesn’t stop Rick Ross or Fat Joe from making glorifying references about it or the original gangster rap stereotypical verses about having cars, cribs, and chicks, which in 2024 is boring as hell to hear from men that have been rapping about all of the excesses of being Tony Montana since I was in high school.
Despite having people like Keith Murray, Ras Kass, Big Daddy Kane, Kool Moe Dee, Busta Rhymes, and a host of other peers from his Def Jam days still alive and ready to rock a mic, LL Cool J decides to pick the two worst lethargic, lame, and slow commercial rappers in history sans Mase to grace Saturday Night Special. In what world is that saving hip-hop and bringing it back to form? For those of yall not hip, Big Pun couldn’t save Fat Joe’s weak rhyme scheme going all the way back to Twinz (Deep Cover ’98), so LL Cool J ain’t busting a grape with him now. Rick Ross always been a hip-hop fraud, down from stealing the name from Freeway Ricky Ross and faking being a street dude when he was a bailiff at a jail. I won’t even get into how he tried to reappropriate allegiance with Chicago rap gang the Gangster Disciples and the drama that unfolded from him perpetrating, but if he couldn’t get away with that then LL Cool J ain’t enough to put some respect back on his weak chops.
Am I happy LL Cool J is back rocking the mic, absolutely. Does Saturday Night Special ruin his GOAT status, hell yes. I expect more from him after an almost fifteen year hiatus and Q-Tip than a production littered with a less than stellar hip-hop NCIS storyline song featuring third tier rappers, a hokey hook that sounds like one of his episode’s titles, and a delivery that is more fit for drunken karaoke than a serious cypher I want to see LL Cool J back in good form but first he has to get back to basics and get his shit together. All that acting has skewed his tunnel vision keeping his hip-hop word.
Saturday Night Special just ain’t paying hip-hop back right.
