Radio is released

Why it matters

Radio came out November 18, 1985, on Def Jam. It is the first full-length LP Def Jam Recordings ever put out, and it is the debut of a sixteen-year-old kid from St. Albans, Queens, named James Todd Smith, who went by LL Cool J. Rick Rubin produced the album. The cover famously credits him as having "REDUCED by Rick Rubin," because the record is so minimal, just a Roland TR-808 and LL's voice and the occasional rock guitar. What Radio does that the records before it had not done is sell LL as a single charismatic MC, a star, the way other genres sold a Mick Jagger or a David Bowie. Up to this point most rap acts were groups (Run-DMC, Furious Five, Treacherous Three, the Crew). LL was one kid on the cover. "I Can't Live Without My Radio." "Rock the Bells." "I Need a Beat." "Dear Yvette." The album was certified platinum the next year. The next thirty years of rap solo-superstardom (Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, the entire 1990s onward) you can trace, at the structural level, back to a teenager and a producer in a New York University dorm room.