Hip-hop is notorious for short-lived careers, but LL Cool J is the inevitable exception that proves the rule. Releasing his first hit, "I Can't Live Without My Radio," in 1985 when he was just 17 years old, LL initially was a hard-hitting, streetwise b-boy with spare beats and ballistic rhymes. He quickly developed an alternate style, a romantic -- and occasionally sappy -- lover's rap epitomized by his mainstream breakthrough single, "I Need Love." LL's first two albums, Radio and Bigger and Deffer, made him a star, but he strived for pop stardom a little too much on 1989's Walking With a Panther
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![Walking With a Panther [Clean]](/img/pop/cov200/drf200/f262/f26292svten.JPG)
![Bigger and Deffer [Clean]](/img/pop/cov200/drc700/c755/c755059fvr4.JPG)
