LL Cool J - 14 Shots to the Dome (March 30, 1993)

It’s the last Tuesday of the month, and we all know what that means – (*checks notes*) um, a continuation of my ongoing reverse chronological narrative of LL Cool J’s career, this time focusing on the man’s fifth album 14 Shots to the Dome? Sure, why the hell not?

1993 saw a significant aural shift within this here hip hop game, as the West Coast found itself overtaking the conversation, their funk samples and gangsta rap posturing sounding fresh and different after the East, which hadn’t yet unleashed the likes of the Wu-Tang Clan upon the world, found itself treading water. Acts such as Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and a promising up-and-comer named Snoop Doggy Dogg were among the genre’s most successful, topping Billboard charts and dominating radio airwaves. This change was noticed by the rappers of the time, and they were forced to choose one of two sides: either sticking to their guns and letting the chips fall where they may, or actively pandering to the listener, changing up their sound in the hope that their audience reach would broaden and their relevance would continue.

LL Cool J, unsurprisingly, chose the latter.

14 Shots to the Dome, as mentioned earlier, was the fifth album from then-future Lip Sync Battle host James Todd Smith. It came three years after his label home, Def Jam Records, released Mama Said Knock You Out, a huge hit for Ladies Love that sold over two million copies off of the strength of its still-banging title track. Although the projects share a DNA strand in that famed producer Marley Marl worked on both, 14 Shots to the Dome was still a bit of a surprise, in that its fourteen tracks (actually labeled as “shots” on the back cover) found LL Cool J wanting it both ways, simultaneously going for a G-Funk groove while trying to keep one foot firmly planted in Queens. It produced one minor hit single, but for the most part is generally considered the biggest failure in the man’s career, at least if we’re referring to the time period where hip hop heads were still checking for LL Cool J as a viable battle rapper-slash-lady lover within our chosen genre.

So were the critics too, um, critical of 14 Shots to the Dome back in 1993? Does this project deserve a second look today, as viewed through the lens of the musical history that has transpired over the past twenty-seven years? Should we be more forgiving of the experiment LL Cool J was obviously undergoing at the time, now that we all know what he’s managed to do with his career since?

Nah to all three. I said what I said.

1. HOW I’M COMIN’
With the first single released from the project, Cool James comes out swinging, the more aggressive nature of this song-slash-rap album intro (he keeps referring to “the album that I’m comin’ with”, presumably 14 Shots to the Dome, so why wouldn’t you classify this as an album intro?) likely stopping many customers at the front door, and honestly, they may have had the right idea. LL Cool J has certainly sounded angry before, but “How I’m Comin’” represents the artists actively trying to portray somebody that he’s not, and it rings hollow to me. Marley Marl’s production at least matches LL’s tone, taking familiar drums from Five Stairsteps’ “Don’t Change Your Love” to drive this gangsta bitch to the moon, but when your three-verse song lasts just over five minutes but feels at least four times as long, that’s a sign that you’ve overstayed your welcome, and “How I’m Comin’” is far too same-y and bland to hold your attention for even half that timespan, no matter how fascinated you may be with the concept of a violent LL Cool J who fires guns and says goofy shit such as, “Take off your clothes and taste the steel,” which, um, sure?

2. BUCKIN’ EM DOWN
The sonic shift from “How I’m Comin’” to “Buckin’ Em Down” that is to be expected when transitioning from Marley Marl to QDIII behind the boards isn’t quite as jarring as you’d expect, since Quincy Jones’s son uses this opportunity to try his hand at a Public Enemy song, except with much less of a Bomb Squad vibe. At least that’s the feeling I got after listening to LL’s performance, speed-rapping utter nonsense at times while sounding like a pre-Reasonable Doubt Jay-Z (no, seriously). Like the previous song, “Buckin’ Em Down” is a more violent affair than you may be used to from our host, as Mr. Smith has gone so far as to have gunshot sound effects laid into the instrumental trio underline his point, which appears to be a middle finger of sorts aimed at “politicians”, “Landlords”, “taxes” (all of this works for me so far), “punks”, “chumps”, “bills” (just imagine LL Cool J nonchalantly pointing his firearm at the light bill), and “beggars”, by which point he’s lost the plot entirely. “Puttin’ bullet holes in tents, no fingerprints,” he says at one point in an attempt to come across as frightening that doesn’t work, and never in my life have I wanted to hear the return of Cool James’s love raps more. The hook here is garbage, the speedy flow isn’t a good fit for our host, and the music makes “Buckin’ Em Down” sound older than it really is. There are the bones for a good (or at least “not horrible”) track here, but they don’t belong to LL Cool J. And so we press on.

3. STAND BY YOUR MAN
Marley’s production sounds predictably dated, but the subject matter of “Stand By Your Man” is one that continues to be explored today, sadly: Cool James Todd expects his anonymous lady friend to have his back unconditionally and be faithful to him always. Unlike most rap songs of this icky ilk, LL doesn’t take the double-standard route, fucking random side pieces while expecting his woman to remain chaste just for him, so I’ll offer a tiny shred of credit to LL there. However, he also never once pledges to stand behind his woman at any point during the track, so we’re right back at a misogynistic square one. “I need a trooper, a soldier, an agent / … The reproducer factor, and / The Queen of the Universe, not an actor” – quite the tall order for a dude who isn’t willing to bring the same to the table, right? I get that 1993 was “just a different time” (that excuse is getting really old, people), but trust me, I was suspicious of “Stand By Your Man” back then, too. Ugh.

4. A LITTLE SOMETHIN’
There are songs where the sample is so distinguishable and distracting that it detracts from the track as a whole. “A Little Somethin’” has two such screengrabs: vocals and music from King Floyd’s “Groove Me”, and the drums from Run DMC’s “Sucker MC’s”. If that combination seems like it wouldn’t make that much sense anyway, well, that’s fair, but in execution it sounds even worse. LL’s coasting through his three verses (and crappy hook), laying down all of the boasts-n-bullshit he can muster alongside corny-ass lines (“… your head be-boppin’ like a bouncy ball”), and he sounds bland as fuck. The only, and I mean only, interesting aspect of “A Little Somethin’” appears toward the end, when Cool James lets it slip that what we’re listening to is actually a Marley Marl remix, which begs the question: just how godawful did the original version of this garbage even sound?

5. PINK COOKIES IN A PLASTIC BAG GETTING CRUSHED BY BUILDINGS
Possibly the most infamous song title (if not the song itself) in LL Cool J’s back catalog, and definitely the most hilarious, “Pink Cookies In A Plastic Bag Getting Crushed By Buildings” is a nonsensical phrase that means absolutely nothing, as our host allegedly came up with it one night while drunk, so don’t bother searching for any deeper meaning here. The song is a sex rap, which makes sense coming from our host, but it doubles as a writing exercise where LL Cool J out-GZA’s the GZA by dropping the names of many of his peers within our chosen genre into said sex rap, doing so in a way that is distracting, but not so much that it disrupts the narrative. All in all, this was very silly, as was Marley Marl’s instrumental, where he seems to have taken his beat from Big Daddy Kane’s “Ain’t No Half Steppin’” and played it in reverse for LL. There’s no need for this to exist as anything more than a memory in LL’s head, but if you must seek out the song whose title is so long I only plan on typing it out two more times today and this isn’t one of them, search for Easy Mo Bee’s remix, which is the version that appeared in the Brett Ratner-directed video Def Jam commissioned for this track (throwing good money after bad, I see), which uses the same Esther Phillips “That’s All Right With Me” sample that Q-Tip later freaked for Mobb Deep on “Give Up The Goods (Just Step)”. Otherwise, just chuckle at the song title and move it along.

6. STRAIGHT FROM QUEENS (FEAT. LIEUTENANT STITCHIE)
One of the lengthiest songs on 14 Shots to the Dome is, weirdly, one where our host raps in a double-time speed that doesn’t require nearly as long of an instrumental track,. LL’s performance on “Straight From Queens” is roughly as silly as what he pulled off on the previous track, but on here the man is stone-cold serious, flurries of boasts-n-bullshit emanating from his face hole, and it isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard from the man, although that isn’t much of a selling point. Marley’s instrumental keeps things moving with very little passion (jazz horn samples are not a proper substitute for emotion), and the hook, provided by pre-religious conversion dancehall artist Lieutenant Stitchie, doesn’t really fit the proceedings. Cool James burns through three verses in a hurry to get to the next thing, and you’ll want to meet him there by skipping ahead.

7. FUNKADELIC RELIC
That song title would seem to imply that Cool James thought of himself as a dinosaur, which he kind of was back in 1993 (even though his debut album was released only eight years prior, time passes much more quickly in hip hop), so this Marley Marl production finds our host running through a brief autobiography, dropping multiple references to his past hits as though he were merely trying to jog his own memory, wanting to remind himself of his impact (and, by extension, the younger members of the audience). Marley’s instrumental for “Funkadelic Relic”, which, shockingly, isn’t super funky to begin with, isn’t bad exactly, but it is instantly forgettable, while Mr. Smith’s verses are so gimmicky that they were difficult for me to take seriously. Le sigh.

8. ALL WE GOT LEFT IS THE BEAT
Weirdly, “All We Got Left is The Beat” actually samples a Funkadelic song (specifically “One Nation Under A Groove”), a task “Funkadelic Relic” couldn’t even manage to pull off. The beat on here, however, not only stands out on 14 Shots to the Dome because of just how different it sounds, it’s also much more polished and engaging, even with the flagrantly aggressive G-Funk-esque posturing producer Bobby “Bobcat” Ervin gives our host. Cool James isn’t exactly the best fit for the sonic surroundings, but he at least tries to make it work, throwing out bars that explore the concepts of gun control and growing up Black on the United States, both of which are far too serious of subjects for this beat, but at least our host’s doing something different here, and that effort is commendable. The song itself is still fairly listenable, if not anywhere near perfect. This was the first actual song on the project I remember not feeling completely indifferent about, which has to count for something.

9. (NFA) NO FRONTIN’ ALLOWED (FEAT. LORDS OF THE UNDERGROUND)
Shifting the sound of 14 Shots to the Dome back Eastward is “(NFA) No Frontin’ Allowed”, a song with its titular elements completely backward (seriously, who puts the parenthetical first?). It’s also a slab of early 1990’s-era boom bap featuring the (rapping portion of the) Lords of the Underground, probably because they had a working relationship with Marley Marl at the time, I don’t know. It isn’t the most logical collaboration on paper, anyway. It kind of works, though: Ladies Love meshes with the harder beat fairly well, his boasts-n-bullshit convincing enough (when he refers to himself as the “Sole survivor of a thousand beefs”, you’ll realize that he isn’t exactly wrong, now, is he?), his two verses bookending the piece. DoItAll and Mr. Funke each receive their own stanzas, neither particularly notable, but certainly enjoyable in the moment. If you’re an older hip hop head, you’ll probably dig this one.

10. BACK SEAT
If “When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing 'fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Pink Cookies In A Plastic Bag Getting Crushed By Buildings Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You'll Know That You're Right” is the most infamous track on 14 Shots to the Dome, then “Back Seat” (or, as its accompanying single is called, "Back Seat (Of My Jeep)”) is its most well-known, even if your familiarity with the track is wholly concentrated on how R&B songstress Monica sang over this QDIII beat for her mega-hit “Don’t Take It Personal (Just One Of Dem Days)” in 1995. Not the most cerebral of tracks, “Back Seat” is literally all about Uncle L fucking a girl in his vehicle, and if that description isn’t enough to convince you that there is no hidden metaphor here, he even tries to convince the girl to let him ejaculate in her eye at one point. Yes. That happens. Kudos to our host for staying on topic, which wasn’t much of a stretch for a dude who loves a good love rap, but the song itself isn’t exactly good enough to cum back to anytime soon. And yes, I see what I did there.

11. SOUL SURVIVOR
It had been a while since I heard so much meh packed into one song, so that was impressive, at least.

12. AIN’T NO STOPPIN’ THIS
Bobcat returns to inject some more energy into 14 Shots to the Dome on “Ain’t No Stoppin’ This”, an old school-flavored rant of hip hop dominance as performed by Cool James Todd, and it’s… fine. This is fine. Our host chugs merrily along through four separate verses, not a single word from which will ever occupy any real estate in your mind after the song is over, but LL’s impulsive delivery is… fine on “Ain’t No Stoppin’ This”. I, for one, am happy that this song wasn’t another excuse for Marley Marl top go back to his “Ain’t No Half Steppin’” well. You two may like this one, and Bobcat plays a large role in that decision for me, but you’ll likely never once think of it again.

13. DIGGY DOWN
“Diggy Down” is a strange title for a song where LL Cool J addresses all of society’s ills at once, but that’s where we were as a nation back in 1993. Bobcat’s instrumental is both engaging and somber enough to complement the subject matter, and as an added bonus he even includes a sample from Quincy Jones and Valerie Simpson’s “Summer In The City” that you two will likely remember from The Pharcyde’s “Passin’ Me By”, an altogether superior track that doesn’t deserve any comparison to this one, as it’s about an entirely different topic, so that’s my bad, I shouldn't have brought that up. “Diggy Down” has a shitty chorus that plays as lazy, which drags down the song significantly, but otherwise Cool James sounds alright, even if his exploration of the “treachery and evil filling our communities” consists of strictly surface-level glances. Could have been worse.

14. CROSSROADS
14 Shots to the Dome’s fourteenth and final shot to the dome is its most ambitious, not to mention its most theatrical. LL Cool J spits three verses of pure unadulterated aggression over a Bobcat beat that sounds nothing like his other work here, but does contain some banging-ass drums to help drive this sucker home quickly. There’s an attempt at “Crossroads” being a lyrically serious track, mostly because our host’s boasts and threats are a bit more focused and quasi-spiritual this time around, but that shouldn’t be seen as a deterrent, because this song kind of fucking rules. What is easily the best song on 14 Shots to the Dome, unfortunately, has a horrendous chorus, one which is played far too often here, that has huge "Do the Bartman" energy (if you know you know), but if you pay more attention to Uncle L’s performance over an entertainingly dramatic Bobcat beat and kind of ignore the hook, you won’t be disappointed. Unlike with the rest of the album, anyway.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Those of you two hoping that history would be kinder to 14 Shots to the Dome and that its critical reception was based on LL Cool J trying to be something he wasn’t, as opposed to the music itself simply not being good, are bound to be disappointed with this project, as it sounds just as bad today as it did back in 1993. 14 Shots to the Dome isn’t a poorly-made album, though: it’s obvious that LL Cool J and his various collaborators did their best to capture what they interpreted to be the moment, and there’s obvious production value to be found in these fourteen pieces. It’s just that, it sucks. It sucks soooooo much. So in this instance, at least, everyone was correct the first time.

Cool James Todd Smith branches out lyrically for brief moments on 14 Shots to the Dome, broaching serious topics while also managing to appeal to the wide swath of ladies in his fanbase who he believed would love to hear a song about him fucking someone who isn’t them in the back of his Jeep. But his social consciousness feels like a mask, something he slipped on because he felt a responsibility to do so, not unlike a face mask during a pandemic: his surface-level observations can be sourced from literally anywhere, and he brings nothing original to the discussion. And his prevalent shit-talking, although earned given the man’s place in the hip hop pantheon, is made up of him coasting on his past successes, which, again, he’s one of the few artists who was entitled to do this back in 1993, but that doesn’t mean that anyone actually cares. His misplaced aggression throughout 14 Shots to the Dome makes for an uncomfortable listen, as though LL heard you were talking shit and decided to scream at you directly for an hour, and that just isn’t entertaining.

Primary producer Marley Marl doesn’t help matters either, disrupting LL’s various claims of dominance with musical backing that sounded outdated even back in 1993, as though the man had refused to learn anything new in 1989 and hoped that our chosen genre would return to the era he performed best in, and that may have been LL’s biggest mistake with 14 Shots to the Dome: I can only imagine how much better this could have sounded had he handed the reigns to Bobcat instead. Sure, it certainly wouldn’t have been great, especially if all the lyrical content remained the same, but musically it would have been much more engaging. All in all, 14 Shots to the Dome is rightfully referred to as a dud, and no length of time passage will ever forgive that.

BUY OR BURN? As shitty as 14 Shots to the Dome ultimately still is, there are a handful of tracks that deserve at least a cursory listen, so I would recommend you stream the songs listed below, but leave everything else the fuck alone. Don’t buy this or stream it in full – there’s no need to get LL’s hopes up. We didn’t deserve this shit from him.

BEST TRACKS: “Crossroads”; “All We Got Left Is The Beat”; “(NFA) No Frontin’ Allowed”; and, for the advanced listener, “Pink Cookies In A Plastic Bag Getting Crushed By Buildings (Remix)”, which blows the original out of the water thanks to Easy Mo Bee’s insistence that the instrumental actually sound “fucking good”

-Max

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