LL Cool J is The Most Important Artist in Hip-Hop 

On today’s episode, we take a look at LL Cool J and his importance to the Rap/Hip-Hop.
In the span of nearly 40 years in the music industry, LL Cool J has 14 overall albums that have charted on the Billboard 200 Charts since his debut in 1984.
His incredible longevity on the charts is one of the most impressive and iconic runs of all time. For most of his career, LL Cool J maintained an important spot in Hip-Hop by lasting through several generations of Hip-Hop, whether it’s the 80s with Run-DMC, The Beastie Boy or the 90s with 2Pac Shakur, Biggie Smalls as well as the 2000s with Jay-Z and Eminem.
He was the first rap artist with a hit album and song in 3 decades. Nowadays Hip-Hop artists like Drake, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, & Future can easily release an album and debut at number-one with high streaming sales and not have to worry much about promotion, but there was a time where Hip-Hop wasn’t seen as the main genre like it is today.
Today Hip-Hop is the #1 genre in music and most of it’s success stems from the younger generation who often rebel. It’s said by many critics that Hip-Hop in the 1980s was the new “punk” which at the time was often frowned upon during the Gen-X generation. During the 1980s of the MTV era, Hip-Hop saw a rise in album sales and with that LL Cool J would be the first major solo rap star to be played on MTV.