LL Cool J: I Wish I Knew

Neal Brennan (0:00)

Guys, this is a special one for me. It's, I think, a first rapper. Maybe one of the things he does. Guys, he's hard as hell.

He's our first guest who's hard as, who went on the record as saying, I'm hard as hell. He was a teenager when he said it. Or like 20, just low 20s. He's got, I looked up two Grammys. Grammys are so, it's like, you get thanks for nothing. He's only worthy of two Grammys. Get the fuck out of here.

He's got a Kennedy Center honor. He's on his 29th season of NCIS.

LL Cool J (0:35)

Let's get to work.

Neal Brennan (0:37)

This is literally your 15th?

LL Cool J (0:39)

Well, this will be, I did 14 seasons on LA with my character Sam Hanna. I did one year on Hawaii and I did some guest appearances on the mothership.

Neal Brennan (0:53)

So this is a, you play a rogue cop who keeps getting transferred.

In a lot of ways. It's LL Cool J, guys. Please clap. This is what I'm trying to say. We don't recognize the voice. Here, I have a lot of questions and he has, he's been game with the new format. He wrote down his, some things that he wished he knew sooner. We'll get to him. Infinite respect for all your different things you've done. One of my favorite things is you were on an autobiography in 97 That was early to-

LL Cool J (1:23)

A little presumptuous.

Neal Brennan (1:24)

No, no, no. Scott Dixon did it. I think I can talk about it now. I think I've done enough. I am 31

In 1997, you were probably 31 or 29 Not old. But you were really open about your childhood, which was not a thing that was not hip hop.

LL Cool J (1:47)

No.

Neal Brennan (1:48)

It kind of still isn't, but it really wasn't then.

LL Cool J (1:51)

Yeah.

Neal Brennan (1:52)

Can you give people, not a refresher, but talk about some of the stuff you talked about in the book that surprised people and or was hard to write about.

LL Cool J (2:00)

Well, first of all, thanks for having me, Neal. Glad to be here. Very cool. I was talking about, it's so funny, I was talking to some of my guys earlier, the team. It just started off with a, it was pretty rocky.

Seeing my mother get shot by my father early on. And my grandmother, I was about four. I was four.

Neal Brennan (2:21)

And you remember it?

LL Cool J (2:22)

Vividly. Because it was that traumatic.

Neal Brennan (2:25)

Yeah, of course.

LL Cool J (2:25)

So you're capable. We all have memories from four or five that you can, I was four, but you can remember. And very clear. So, and so that was tough.

It made me realize that the world is not a cartoon. You know what I'm saying? In that those kinds of things change you. You know, doesn't have to change you for the worse, but it does change you. And it does impact how you navigate the world and how you think about danger. And I realized very early on that we have a world where, you know, danger exists. So you have to be aware and just kind of live your life a little bit more.

It just made me in a lot of ways more fearless.

Neal Brennan (3:08)

Oh, that's interesting.

LL Cool J (3:09)

You know, more willing to go out there and do whatever because anything can happen anyway. So it made me, I didn't cower. It actually showed me that pressure is not something to fear.

And adversity isn't either. It's something to actually, it's an opportunity.

Neal Brennan (3:27)

Your mom recovered.

LL Cool J (3:28)

Yes, mother and grandfather recovered. They both recovered.

Neal Brennan (3:31)

They were both shot?

LL Cool J (3:32)

They were both shot, yes. And they both recovered. They told my mother she never walked again and she did.

Neal Brennan (3:38)

Oh, that's great.

LL Cool J (3:39)

Yeah, that was a blessing.

Neal Brennan (3:40)

Did seeing them recover give you a belief in resilience?

LL Cool J (3:45)

Absolutely. And it gave me a belief in God.

Neal Brennan (3:48)

Oh yeah?

LL Cool J (3:48)

Yeah, for me. I know everybody has their own fears.

Neal Brennan (3:50)

Yeah, but I'm saying, so you're four years old, you see that and you go, okay, you don't know what you believe and then?

LL Cool J (3:57)

Well, I'm talking about in retrospect. In the moment, the only thing you really believe is that there's a problem and we need to respond to it in a way that's gonna be helpful and make a contribution.