“This is what hip-hop at 50 looks like!” an exultant LL Cool J declared Sunday night at the United Center during Chicago’s installment of The F.O.R.C.E. Live, the rap giant’s multi-artist touring tribute to a tectonically forceful genre, now five decades along and not even close to settling down.
Its titular backronym standing for Frequencies of Real Creative Energy, The F.O.R.C.E. Live is also the first headlining arena tour in 30 years for LL, who during that period had also established himself as an actor on TV (notably, the “NCIS” franchise) and in film, book author, producer, and more. Having gotten his start in hip-hop’s childhood, he is often characterized as the first superstar rapper.
Chicago’s show was only the fourth stop of this North American summer trek, which had gotten off to a shaky start after East Coast dates in June and July were rescheduled. In a June 29 Instagram video statement, LL implied that production details hadn’t been quite up to snuff, before vowing that “it’s gonna be a show like you’ve never seen before, baby, promise.”
And LL and company delivered, celebrating hip-hop’s golden anniversary with Golden Era rap trailblazers, including such masters of the form as Rakim, Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick — who personified the music’s root system in all its indefatigable glory.
Fittingly, hip-hop music’s venerable live band, Philadelphia natives The Roots, backed all the performers. And speaking of indefatigable, Roots MC Black Thought rhymed alongside just about every rapper who hit the stage throughout the lengthy, exhilarating evening.
A key component of LL’s talent curation — honoring homegrown hip-hop in each city on the tour — found Black Thought also introducing legendary Chicago wordsmith Common.
The South Side native, who first came to underground prominence in the early ’90s, singled out one concertgoer during a playful freestyle rap that riffed on the venue’s Chicago Bulls legacy: “I should be like Mike/And have my own statue!”
Common then flipped a standard rap-concert exhortation by directing fans to “wave your hands in the air like you really DO care.”
He followed a rendition of “The Food,” in which he spat both his own and the recorded version’s caddish feature rap by Kanye West, with the announcement, “We gonna lift up women now” — and proceeded to radiate the respectful warmth of 2000’s “The Light,” Common’s billet-doux to Erykah Badu.
Then Black Thought hyped the appearance of the evening’s headliner, (apocryphally) dubbing LL Cool J the originator of the popular term “GOAT” — and the full room went happily nuts.
LL hit the stage in glittery black shirt, understated neck chains, red pants and black Yankees cap, and laid into his swaggering, pugnacious slammer, “I’m Bad”: “I’m the pinnacle, that means I reign supreme/And I’m notorious, I’ll crush you like a jellybean.”
The proud product of Queens, N.Y., alternated between beatdown (“4,3,2,1”), bawdy (“Big Ole Butt“), distinctly poppy (“Around The Way Girl”) and downright pretty (“I Need Love”), across his two sets. Songs flowed together with little demarcation.
The show’s informational video design conjured a mesmerizing flow of its own. Rivers of vividly-hued, block-lettered names — of rappers, DJs, producers — from every era of hip-hop’s half-century existence, poured like lyrics from a microphone over the assortment of various-sized screens, arrayed on, over, under and around the stage.
Between LL’s sets, that stage was taken over by Rakim, Doug E. Fresh, Slick Rick and Cleveland trio Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, abetted by the redoubtable turntable skills of DJ Jazzy Jeff and DJ Z-Trip.
Rakim, also known as “the God MC,” dazzled all present with an acclaimed pair of songs he originated with late producer and performing partner, Eric B: “Check My Melody” and “Microphone Fiend,” along with an affectionate cover of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s (Wu-Tang Clan) classic, “Shimmy Shimmy Ya.”
Fresh, credited as hip-hop’s original human beatbox, aced an impressive beatbox mirror-duet with veteran Roots drummer Questlove.
The three expert rapper-singers of Bone Thugs fleetly conquered their set.
LL returned to close the show with his two most colossal songs. The Grammy-winning “Mama Said Knock You Out” and early headbanger “Rock the Bells” pulverized the crowd into blissful oblivion.
