LL Cool J, that has been a part of the hip-hop community since the 1980s, went to Instagram on Wednesday (Sept. 21) to criticize DJ Akademiks for labeling old-school hip-hop enthusiasts "dusty."
“A DJ basically said that a lot of the pioneers in hip-hop, they’re dusty or how can they be the person that invented hip-hop if they don’t have a lot of money, or if they don’t represent like they have a lot of dough,” he said, trying to not say DJ Akademiks’ name. “Let me explain something to you: Don’t think just because somebody knows how to get money — or fails to get money — that they didn’t make a contribution to the culture.”
“No one discusses Miles Davis’ bank account,” the “I Need Love” rapper continued. “We don’t talk about John Coltrane’s bank account. A lot of even rock musicians … a lot of great country artists, we don’t talk about their bank accounts … This idea that you have to have money or else you don’t have any value is a bad idea and it’s a misinformed way of looking at the world and the culture.”
“Today, you can come up with your five-year plan, your 10-year plan, your 20-year plan. You can go find a manager, you can find an accountant, you can find a team that helps your career go to the next level … When hip-hop first started, there were no managers, there were no accountants that believed in it. Record companies didn’t even believe in it. Nobody believed in it.
How can you make a five-year plan or a 10-year plan on something that doesn’t even exist yet? So just because [the founders of hip-hop] didn’t get rich, just because they weren’t able to pile up millions or billions of dollars, does not mean that they didn’t make a contribution to this culture. They created an industry that we all ate off of! They created an industry that you eat off of,” He concluded.