Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 24/04/06
Label: DEFJAM

As a contender for funniest lyric of 2006, "Young L gotta walk this walk, girl" ("Freeze") must rank pretty high. One of the world's most elderly mack daddys, LL Cool J here resembles no-one so much as Mick Jagger and David Bowie in that "Dancing In The Streets" video. "I am young! I am a rebel! Ain't nobody gonna tie me down! Hey, are those my golf trousers?"

Still in no doubt, however, that the Ladies Love him, he's packed this '90s-flavoured collection with gooey slow jams (because girls can't do their hair to gangsta rap, silly!) and a roster of feisty femmes - amongst the seven thousand collaborations here are songs with Mary J Blige, Jennifer Lopez and Mary Mary. But for a brace of peppier, harder-edged 'street' tracks, his 12th album is so girly it should be wearing pink tights and a tiara.

J-Lo does good work with a script that has her insist LL is so irresistible she can scarcely keep her virtue intact. As a result, "Control Myself" is the album's standout, by dint not only of her remarkable ability to sound like she's just escaped from a convent into a male model convention, but also the track's old-skool Afrika Bambaataa sample, fabulously ditzy "zzzuh zzzuh zzzuh" scatting and shameless resemblance to "Funky Cold Medina".

Mary J Blige is unfortunately lumbered with simpering side-kick duties in "Favorite Flavor", in which she compares the star of "Rollerball: The Remake" to all manner of tooth-rotting sweets like "lemon drops with chocolate kisses." "All I wanna do is eat you up 'cos you look so good", grimaces the Condoleeza Rice of R&B. "No place you'd rather be than here with me / Mixing chocolate in the factory", grrrs LL. No one comes out of it looking good.

People reckon misogyny in rap is all about bitch-slapping and unreliable parenting. It's more insidious than that - LL's schtick, like that of so many in the hip hop mainstream, is to address women like some cravate-wearing relic from a David Niven film: "Get your best dress on tonight" he offers by means of compensation to his long-suffering lady in the drippy Neptunes-produced, Jamie Foxx-graced "Best Dress". "Be a good little girl, keep your legs crossed, and maybe I'll marry you when I'd done shagging around" (we're paraphrasing) he promises in aforementioned stud-apologia "Freeze".

And finally, slimy, chimey slow jam "Down The Aisle" sees our incorrigible bachelor finally rhyming "God showed me you" with "I do". Ooh, hold me back.

    by Anna Britten