LL Cool J is not a fan of his contribution to Brad Paisley’s 2013 song “Accidental Racist” and admits he completely missed the mark on that one.
Reflecting on his decades-long career in a conversation with Vulture published on Wednesday (September 4), LL said he “completely blew” it with his verse, which speaks from the perspective of a Black man talking to a white man from the south.
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“I mean, I damn near don’t even want to bring it up, but if I have to it would be ‘Accidental Racist,'” he said. “Yo, I completely blew that one. Like, in terms of my intention versus how it came off to people. Oh my God. Like, I missed the mark crazy. And it always bothered me because my intention was absolutely not how it came off.
“I feel like it was like having a hot date with a vegan and setting everything up wonderful and the first thing the chef brings out is a big, juicy steak. But you think it’s vegan still, you know what I mean? I completely screwed that one up and didn’t mean to.”
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He continued: “It was the worst kind of miss because it’s one thing to fail; it’s another thing to fail when you’re looking to do the right thing and you’re looking to say the right thing. And then it goes Gold, which is really fucking bizarre. I don’t even have a copy of the plaque.
“I never even asked for one. Like, I made songs that just weren’t great songs. Okay. I can live with that. But to have a song that garners that much attention and actually negatively impacts the way people perceive my intention was the worst. That shit was the worst”
He concluded: “I think it was just the idea that, somehow, I was looking to appease racists. Yo, bro, that is not what I meant. To put it in simple terms, I was trying to say, ‘First of all, just leave me the fuck alone because of what I look like. Let’s start there. And then we could see what else can happen from there.’ But instead, I said the iron chains and the durag … It just was a bad metaphor. It was just all wrong.”
In other news, ahead of his new album The FORCE dropping on Friday (September 5), LL Cool J shared his thoughts on the current state of Hip Hop in a conversation with The New York Times.
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When asked what’s missing from today’s music, LL had a simple answer: “Songwriting.”
He added: “There’s nothing wrong with rapping about money and success, and there’s nothing wrong with rapping about pure sex — I love them both. [But] there has to be more to it than that, to me, in order for a project to be compelling.”
