It’s any writer’s dream to invent a phrase that sticks in the cultural lexicon. But every time you’re out there calling Messi or Serena or LeBron a goat, LL Cool J’s ears ring.

“Man, it’s crazy. ‘This guy’s the goat, that guy’s the goat. Goat, goat, goat.’ It’s everywhere,” the rap goat, real name James Todd Smith, laughs over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “You just never know how you’re gonna impact the world, you know?”

The acronym, for Greatest Of All Time, was the title of LL’s eighth album, released in 2000 (his first album to top Billboard’s pop charts). Somewhere in the intervening years, it flourished. “You ever seen that movie, It’s a Wonderful Life?” he asks. “He has that moment where he sees what the world would be like if he’d never lived. It feels like that sometimes. Like, would it be the kangaroo? Would it be the donkey? I don’t know.”

The rap legend is releasing The Force, his first new album in 11 years and his 14th overall since his iconic debut Radio, released in 1985 when he was just 17 years old, fresh-faced and Kangol-topped, a ghetto blaster cradling his neck. At the time, he was the embodiment of hip-hop’s brash, cocky, new-school energy, helping to usher the genre into mainstream ubiquity. Now 56 and a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, the energy remains but the specifics differ.

During the album’s press run, LL’s already found himself in a viral (albeit exceedingly civil) kerfuffle with Andre 3000, the Outkast rapper who recently pivoted to ambient flute after suggesting that, at 48, he’s out of authentic experiences to rhyme about. (“Not to say that age is a thing that dictates what you rap about, but in a way it does… ‘I gotta go get a colonoscopy.’ What do you rap about?” Andre 3000 told GQ last November).

Appearing on The Shop podcast in May, LL took issue with Andre’s stance. “When you were 14, you weren’t rapping about pubescent growth spurts. So, why do you have to get older and talk about your prostate?” he questioned. It earned a measured response from Andre who suggested, “If it’s in you, you should rap until you die… It’s not enough for me.”

Clearly, it’s enough for LL. “Look, I respect Andre’s position so it’s no reflection on him. I just think if Mick Jagger and the Stones can run around and have fun and create and do art, and if Paul McCartney can run around and do his art, and if Bono and Bruce Springsteen and countless others can run around and do their art, why can’t LL Cool J?” he says. “I don’t understand why I should limit myself based on some weird standard that somebody put on a really young genre, just because we’re not accustomed to rappers maturing in the genre. Hip-hop is only 50 years old, you know?”

The great equaliser isn’t age but passion, purpose, and having something to say, says LL. “When you press play, it’s not, ‘How old was the bass player?’ It’s just, ‘How does it sound?’”

In its intent, The Force is surprising. This isn’t some quick play for a comeback pop hit. On the urgent opener Spirit of Cyrus, LL tackles police brutality and systemic racism via a menacing character study from the point of view of rogue LAPD officer-turned-cop killer, Christopher Dorner. On Saturday Night Special, featuring fellow veterans Rick Ross and Fat Joe, he plays the streetwise uncle doling out hard-won advice to young’uns. On the majestic 30 Decembers, inspired by a trip back to his Queens neighbourhood during the pandemic, he experiences ego death after realising kids on the subway have no idea who he is.

Entirely produced by Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest – LL says he scrapped 30 to 40 tracks he’d originally worked on with Dr Dre after Tip’s late Tribe-mate Phife Dawg appeared to him in a dream (“I acted on that dream, I had to,” he says) – the project shows a willingness to innovate, or at least push some sonic boundaries, where Afro-futurist funk clashes with spaced-out dub beats and wonky synths. There are few concessions to current trends or the charts. For better or worse, this is #realrap. “Oh, without a doubt. This album, this is art,” says LL.

Forty years into his career – he signed to Def Jam at 16; the record label is also celebrating its 40th anniversary this year – LL understands it’s also a reintroduction. The last time he screamed “Don’t call it a comeback!” was in 1990. By now, multiple generations know him solely as the cuddly host of Lip Sync Battle and various awards shows, or undercover agent Sam Hanna (Chris O’Donnell’s partner) on NCIS: Los Angeles, which he’s played since 2009.

“I know I have two audiences,” he says. “I have my ‘don’t call it a comeback’ audience, and I have an audience who is more like, ‘oh, I didn’t know he raps!’ To be able to create a record where those people get a chance to hear me really putting it down, I felt like that would be fun.”

It’s not just an issue of age. With The Force, you sense he’s fighting for his artistic integrity, too. Often defined by his braggadocio, LL’s always had range. Go back and hear his ferocious flow on Nitro on Walking with a Panther (1989), then cut to an oddball classic like Pink Cookies in a Plastic Bag Getting Crushed by Buildings from 14 Shots to the Dome (1993).

On today’s Spotify, his top streamed songs after Mama Said Knock You Out are the sultry Doin’ It, Around the Way Girl, and Hey Lover – fitting for a guy who made it OK for rappers to be vulnerable and sexual, that mix of machismo and sensitivity. On The Force, he’s still tapping that well at 56 with Proclivities, a raunchy track with rapper Saweetie.

“Yo, I like to talk sex, too. I’m very comfortable with that,” he says. “It’s what I enjoy writing about, it’s fun, it’s interesting. Proclivities: everybody has them, right? To delve into that shadow side of people’s lives, and play around in the shadows, it’s exciting to me.”

It was on his second album, 1987’s Bigger and Deffer that he recorded I Need Love, a rap track still surprising in its to-the-limit yearning. In today’s sexual climate, where tenderness involves choking (look, I don’t know what the kids are doing), it all seems relevant. But I imagine LL must’ve got shit back in the day for daring to be soft?

“Well, the short answer is yes,” he says. “But it’s interesting to me how, like, Bob Marley does what he does, harder records and softer records; the Beatles, harder records, softer records; Michael Jackson, uptempo records like Beat It and Billy Jean, softer records like Human Nature. Even in jazz, everything ain’t Round Midnight, you know? I’m just owning my artistic licence and my freedom to do what I want to create.

“I never allowed the cultural handcuffs to stop me from doing what I wanted to do when it comes to hip-hop,” he adds. “I’m being as true as you can be to art. That’s what I should be doing! Why should I limit my musical palette, or the spectrum I play with, to one thing just to paint an image? That’s not true art.”

His acting – which has included roles opposite Robin Williams (Toys) and Al Pacino (Any Given Sunday), and the video classic In Too Deep – feeds a different sort of expression. “I enjoy acting, but music is my first love,” he says.

Last year he ended his run on NCIS: Los Angeles when the show was cancelled, and shifted to NCIS: Hawai’i; the spin-off was axed in May. Sydney has its own NCIS now, I say. “Congratulations. I love that for you guys,” says LL.

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You could cameo, I suggest. “I mean, right now I’m working on music, but hey you never know,” he says. “Like, that’s not impossible. It could definitely happen.”

If his relationship with the screen is flexible, the connection to hip-hop remains steadfast. “It’s never waxed or waned. I may have stopped putting out music for a long time because I was working on a TV show, but that’s because you can’t be a part-time artist. I don’t believe in that,” LL says.

“You can’t be half-in, half-out when you’re a true writer. You have to dedicate yourself to it if you’re going to make stuff that means something to you. So I took that 10, 12-year hiatus, but then I started working again; I started paying attention and relearning how to rap and studying rhyming again and reading great literature and looking at things that mean something. I worked hard to make something this dope.”

LL Cool J’s The Force is out on Friday.

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