PUBLISHED BY PARFIT - AUGUST 4, 2017 

Over the last couple of years, Drink Champs, hosted by N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN, has become one of the most popular podcasts, and with good reason. The show, fueled by the hosts’ familiarity and respect for their guests, along with a healthy amount of alcohol, often leads to some of the most revealing interviews one will see of celebrities who are often closed or tightly scripted with talking points. LL Cool J, who just yesterday (August 3) was named the first Hip-Hop artist to receive a Kennedy Center Honor, was the most recent guest, and his appearance on the show did not disappoint.

From the outset, LL made it clear he came to drop jewels. He began by pointing out the difficulties of the trail he blazed as one of Hip-Hop’s first sex symbols, at a time when rappers were supposed to be hard. “Hip-Hop is a complex thing. At the end of the day, if you’re a decent-looking fella, you gotta damn near kill yourself to be accepted by dudes. I mean look at Pac. He’s a handsome dude, but look what he had to do in order for guys to accept him,” he says (2:56). “You know if I made ‘One More Chance,’ they would have called it a love song, but from Biggie, it was something else” he continues, noting the double standard for men who rapped about love but weren’t considered attractive in the traditional sense. “It takes courage to do what you love and to do what you believe in. That was my thing. I just wanted to have girls. Most of my friends did too, so I figured I’d make some songs and try to get some,” he laughs. “The thing with Hip-Hop is that, if you’re not spitting gun bars and talking about packs, that G.O.A.T. title is going to be elusive for you. Most of the time the voting members, that’s what they really want. And, I do too, but I just decided that I was going to do what I wanted to do. I had the balls to just do what I wanted to do. So, I did hard records and love records and weird records and creative, artsy sh*t.”

Along those lines, LL also spoke at length later in the podcast about...

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