"As soon as we finished the demo, me and Rick played it for Russell. I remember sitting on a pillow because Russell didn't have chairs in his office at 1133 Broadway. Russell looked at me then asked Rick, 'Who's this guy smilin' at?' He was smiling, too. Until then, I'd never heard of him. All I knew was that he was behind that desk and had something to do with my dream." —LL Cool J remembers the time he and Rick Rubin brought his first song, "I Need a Beat" for Russell Simmons to hear. Part of GQ's excerpt from Bill Adler's forthcoming oral history, Def Jam Recordings: [...]

The iconic '90s hip-hop clothing line FUBU is relaunching as FB Legacy, and marketing itself with a series of "testimonials" by rappers waxing poetic about the brand. D-Block's Jadakiss remembers when LL Cool J-who was from the same Queens neighborhood as company founder Damien Johns-managed to wear a FUBU hat in a 1997 Gap commercial. For those of us old enough to remember, it really was pretty incredible. LL even worked the upstart company's acronym into the rhyme he performed as part of The Gap's "How Easy Is This?" campaign for their "easy-fit" jeans. "G-A-P gritty," he said. "Ready to go/For Us By Us/On the low…" [...]

"It started out with a leggy, bikini-clad avatar. She said she was a missile expert—the '1st Lady of Missiles,' in fact—but sometimes suggested she worked with the CIA. With multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts, she earned a following of social media-crazed security wonks. Then came the accusations of using sex appeal for espionage." —Awl pal Spencer Ackerman writes in Wired about the fascinating story of accused social networking spy Shawna Gorman, a.k.a. "PrimorisEra." That first sentence is very reminiscent of L.L. Cool J's "Going Back to Cali."

20. Depeche Mode, Violator 19. Bell Biv DeVoe, Poison 18. Fugazi, Repeater 17. Sinéad O'Connor, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got 16. Deee-Lite, World Clique