LL Cool J specializes in the art of the triumphant return. Dating back to the ’80s, he’s evaded prolonged stagnation with timely reinventions, shifting from boisterous, streetwise spitter (Radio) to loverboy (Bigger and DEFfer), to too much loverboy (Walking with a Panther) to the sweet spot of tough guy-loverboy (Mama Said Knock You Out) and so on and so forth. While he was able to cultivate resurgences throughout the ’90s and ‘00s, his last two albums, Exit 13 (2008) and Authentic (2013) sputtered due to bloat, formulaic production and spurts of iffy punchlines. But it turns out that those lapses were only preludes to the inevitable. Powered by fierce rhymes and Q-Tip’s stylish retro production, LL’s latest album, The Force, is his most potent LP in over 30 years.

Checking in at a trim 44 minutes, the new LP is a sharp distillation of LL in all his power. It starts with the Q-Tip-produced canvas he’s been given to paint on; rather than trying to adapt to the sounds of today, he traverses a B-boy vortex of surrealistic funk, dystopian industrial and majestic disco for tracks that feel too classical and too otherworldly to be dated. Here, he spits with the diction and all-around command of his 1990 self, relaying colorful vignettes of a freedom-fighting James Bond. No matter the role, he renders each tale with clarity, precision and a natural sense of theater. Q-Tip’s production only further enhances the cinema. It all plays out like a micro-anthology.

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