LL Cool J Working on "Authentic Hip-Hop," Releases My Connect Studio

LL Cool J recently gave an interview during which he echoed some of the sentiments we are hearing from a lot of artists these days – we need to get music back on track.  Still, with a recurring role on NCIS: Los Angeles, it seemed that his focus might be more on acting than rapping but his recent news has clarified things.

First, the man who has released 12 studio albums of his own, launched a virtual recording software called My Connect Studio.  It’s great because he collaborated with Sony to help budding artists experience what it is like to be in a studio-session in real-time through the internet. 

He came up with the concept because the way artists make music has changed drastically over the years.  A lot of the components on a track are actually sent through the internet which really can slow down the process. He explains:  "They'll [producers] e-mail me the track. I'm e-mailing vocals. They don't like something, I'm sending it back. We're going back and forth and doing this dance. A lot of music is being created that way right now. What I wanted to do is be able to create music in real-time."

Can you imagine what this will do to collaborations? Artists who have never met will be able to work on tracks together without so much hassle.  "You may get with a kid from London, you may get with a kid from Paris simply because you went on the site and visited the lobby and met somebody and went into a session and started creating. So this is the next level of music creation," LL says. It will also work with Facebook and Twitter. 

He’s also putting his money where his mouth is – LL is using My Connect Studio on his upcoming album:  "I'm going to be doing a little bit of the album on the studio, make sure that it is official.  And as a matter of fact I started on my album too. It's authentic hip-hop, it's the business."

That’s great news!  Authentic hip-hop in a world of auto-tune and random collaborations might be exactly what we need.  To illustrate his point, when he launched his software, he had Grandmaster Flash come out and spin records at the event.  He says:  "Grandmaster Flash is one of the foundations and pillars of hip-hop culture. And that was the whole point.  I really wanted to show people how far the culture has come. I don't want to go do the Sony thing and leave the culture behind. I want to bring the culture with me."

Interested in getting your hands on that program?  My Connect Studio is already available for PCs andwill be released soon on Mac and all mobile devices.