![]() Hip-hop’s earliest sex symbols were fresh-suited, choreographed rappers with the finest silk in their wardrobes, who seemed styled after Motown quartets. It’s about being authentically sexy and having the bars to match.īefore the pretty boys and hardcore lovers knew the way to our hearts, it was about the smoothies. But being a hip-hop hunk is still, at the core, about range, duality, and skillset. Over time, the idea of the rap hunk has morphed to be more inclusive and less strictly hardcore, with space for softness and queer icons. We remember the days when Method Man was rap’s resident sleepy-eyed heartthrob, rhyming about about making war or making babies, and when Tupac paraded about stages shirtless. Who wants to go the sex symbol route at this point?”Īctually, some of us yearn for the era when hip-hop hunks topped the charts, dominated the scene, and inspired fans’ fantasies. ![]() “For me, it’s like, I’m grimy, same-clothes-for-three-days-in-a-row nigga. “I fought that ‘All I Need’ shit,” Meth said, admitting it was foolish in hindsight. Blige duet “ I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need (To Get By)” became an instant hip-hop/R&B classic, and he suddenly noticed more women screaming in the crowd at Wu-Tang shows. Meth recalled feeling a sense of dread after his Mary J. “All the guys that did the sex symbol shit? Lost their audience,” Method Man explained in a 2022 interview, ironically citing LL as an exception. Being a sex symbol meant you were an object of desire in a genre built firmly on hyper-masculine ideals, meaning a rapper couldn’t comfortably command the charts and hearts of people without apparently alienating their male fanbase. To the average rapper, there was a big difference between pleading on records (the domain of R&B singers) and being effortlessly sexy and cool while maintaining credibility as an MC. But mostly, he had to know hip-hop was about bravado-and increasingly so, from the time LL entered the industry in the eighties to the glare of the gangsta rap movement and the turn of the millennium. By 2000, he was the hottest guy in rap, exercising his right not to be objectified. But in the video, directed by Hype Williams, you see the opposite view: a frontal shot of LL turning that same corner in slow motion. I recall my heart fluttering as I ran behind him and touched his sleeve, thinking I’d make a cameo. Running on pure hormones at age 12, I booked it to the intersection of Farmers and Linden Boulevards with a group of girls, arriving just in time to see the back of LL turning the corner, in the middle of shooting the video for his Boyz II Men duet “Hey Lover,” a sweet ode to a crush and a high point in LL’s canon of sultry rap ballads. ![]() ![]() Albans, Queens, with his mother and grandmother, had gone from Kangol-clad b-boy-era MC to a hard-bodied, lip-licking king. The same James Todd Smith who grew up around my way, in St. At that point, the man with the most sensual alias in rap, Ladies Love Cool James, was a dimpled crossover heartthrob on the heels of releasing his sixth album, Mr. Word got around that LL Cool J was filming a music video in my neighborhood.
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