James Todd Smith. LL Cool J. Ladies Love Cool James. Uncle L. One man with many names. A man of unlimited ambition and the talent to back it up. A man of undeniable influence who helped introduce the music of the urban underground into suburban homes across the country.

LL Cool J has done what most rap artists have not been able to: He has remained relevant for more than two decades. As a pioneer of the genre, he has evolved along with the constantly changing hip-hop culture and has remained a superstar. Despite a career marked by controversy and criticism from his peers, LL has continually shifted gears and reinvented his image and his music to stay at or near the top.

His eight consecutive platinum albums are a testament to his staying power and his 20+ movies and hit TV series prove that his star power extends far beyond music. In a youthdominated industry filled with one-hit wonders and shortlived careers, Uncle L, one of rap’s very few elder statesmen, continues to make music and be a vital part of hip-hop history well into his thirties.

The origins of rap music and the hip-hop culture can be traced back to three DJs from the Bronx: Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash. Clive Campbell, a.k.a. Kool DJ Herc, was a Jamaican-born teenager trying to make a name for himself as one of his neighborhood’s best DJs during late 1973. He was a master at finding the most danceable part of a reggae, funk, or soul record—known as the break—and playing it over and over to keep the crowd moving to the beat. Switching back and forth between two records, Herc routinely turned a “five second breakdown into a five-minute loop of fury,” says hip-hop journalist and author Jeff Chang in his book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop.

More than anything, what separated Herc from other DJs in his neighborhood was the monstrously powerful sound system his father had lent him to perform at house and block parties. Not only was it the hugest and loudest system in the area but also it allowed Herc to hook up a microphone and talk and rhyme while he played records. Within a few years, Herc was the most popular DJ in the Bronx and was influencing other DJs, including Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash, both of whom ushered hip-hop into the late 1970s and early 1980s.

As an art form, hip-hop has come a long way from its humble beginnings at a back-to-school party in a recreation room on Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, where Herc first became famous. LL Cool J and other rappers sell out arenas around the world. Hip-hop is not only a multimillion-dollar business but also the voice of an entire generation. Hip-hop’s pervasive influence is abundantly evident, from urban youths listening to Jay-Z on street corners to suburban moms blasting Outkast through their minivan speakers.

Hip-hop began as a culture of young men and women searching for a way to express themselves in the urban sprawl of New York City. Like any culture, hip-hop was defined by the art, music, and self-expression of its people. Their paintbrushes were spray cans and markers. Their canvas was any surface available, from the walls of a subway station to the subway trains themselves, that would proudly display their illicit art form. Their dance floor was any piece of cardboard, linoleum, or smooth surface where the break-dancers, or B-boys, could show their head spins, gravity-defying acrobatics, and seemingly bone-bending popping skills. The foundation of the culture, however, and the glue that held it all together was rap music.

“Hip-hop is the only genre of music that allows us to talk about almost anything,” Grandmaster Flash wrote in the foreword of the The Vibe History of Hip Hop. “Musically it allows us to sample and play and create poetry to the beat of music.”

The early days of hip-hop inspired countless young people growing up in New York and gave them a way to express their creativity. One of those young people was a skinny, energetic boy named James Todd Smith. Armed with a quick wit and a gift for writing lyrics, Todd started writing rhymes when he was nine years old and has never stopped. Thanks to a lifechanging present given to him by the most important man in his life, his grandfather, Todd went from rapping in front of his bedroom mirror to stealing the show at block parties to recording rap’s first gold record—all before the age of 17. Known for his trademark Kangol hats and rolling up one pant leg to his knee, LL became hip-hop’s new-school pioneer, pushing the culture to a never-before-seen level of national prominence.

However, before he became LL Cool J, Todd suffered through a childhood filled with abuse, violence, and instability. In his autobiography titled I Make My Own Rules, LL talks about how rap music gave him hope during a hopeless time: I got deeper and deeper into it—and it got deeper and deeper into me. I was just hypnotized. There was power in this rap music, and it put me under a spell I’ve never come out of. Rap spoke to me, and in it I found myself and the power of my voice. Rap music was my escape from a living hell.