Songoftheday 12/13/15 - Movement of the wind back wheels spin, pop in a cassette and push play...

"Going Back To Cali" - LL Cool J
from the album Less Than Zero (Original Soundtrack) (1987) and Walking With A Panther (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #31 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5

Today's Song of the Day comes from New York rapper LL Cool J, who swooned the women of America with the first big "rap ballad" "I Need Love", scoring his first top 40 pop hit in the fall of 1987. The end of that year saw James Smith contribute a song to the soundtrack to the movie adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' classic novel Less Than Zero. "Going Back To Cali", written by Cool J along with producer Rick Rubin, was a loose, funky and playful diss of the West Coast, along with the women therein. Starting with that trumpet wail along with the turntable scratching, it was his first true "hip hop style" success on mainstream radio...

"Goin' Back To Cali" became LL's second top-40 pop hit in April of 1988, while climbing to #12 on Billboard's R&B chart. Internationally, the single was his second to make the top 40 in the UK at #37.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


LL Cool J did it live on Yo MTV Raps in 1988 to promote the single...

..and here's a pumped up and sweaty J performing live in DC...

Up tomorrow: a Time-ly funkster heads out alone in the lingerie aisle...