LL Cool J leads a hip-hop F.O.R.C.E. as 50th anniversary tour plays LCA with Detroit love

LL Cool J’s three-hour love letter to hip-hop hit Detroit Friday night, as his F.O.R.C.E. Live tour played Little Caesars Arena.

Interwoven sets from guests Common, Ice-T, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and MC Lyte helped the show unfold like an onstage mixtape, with killer house band the Roots as the musical glue.

In a golden-anniversary year of hip-hop nostalgia, it was a festive night that evoked an era of graffiti and tracksuits, scratching and samples, and all kinds of hands in the air, with one of the genre’s early superstars at the helm.

The F.O.R.C.E. tour schedule had been partially postponed and reshuffled earlier this summer amid ostensible production concerns. But the show that played out onstage at LCA Friday was a tight, vivid, no-fuss affair that kept the focus trained on the music.

Here are five takeaways from Friday's concert.

LL Cool J rose to the occasion

With his career in recent years dominated by acting, business ventures and work as a congenial Grammy host, the New York-born rapper’s music gigs have mostly consisted of periodic festival appearances and other specialty dates. Until this tour, it had been three long decades since LL took on an arena headlining tour.

Detroit was just the fourth night of the F.O.R.C.E. tour, but the 55-year-old was the picture of poise and natural-born star power as he dipped into his ample bag of hits from the '80s, '90s and even '00s (“Headsprung”).

Over the course of two separate sets — including the show’s finale — the golden-age rapper served up his signature suaveness (“I Need Love,” “Doin’ It,” “Luv U Better”), party starters (“Going Back to Cali,” “I Can’t Live Without My Radio”) and other crowd-pleasers ("I'm Bad," “Around the Way Girl,” “Big Ole Butt”) before wrapping the night with a pair of his heavier hitters: “Mama Said Knock You Out” and “Rock the Bells.”

The Roots were a rock

Questlove, Black Thought and company were the evening’s musical spine, backing every performer for nearly every song.

The Philly band kicked off the show with performances of some of the ‘70s soul and funk songs that would become essentials for hip-hop samples and breakbeats — the Jimmy Castor Bunch’s “It’s Just Begun,” Sir Joe Quarterman’s “(I Got) So Much Trouble in My Mind,” Brass Construction’s “Movin’” and more.

Accompanied at various points by DJ Jazzy Jeff and DJ Z-Trip, the latter appearing for LL’s sets, the Roots showed why they long ago locked down status as hip-hop’s greatest live band — “one of the legendary pillars,” as Common said onstage Friday.

Ice-T addressed the elephant in the room

Pausing during his set, the L.A. veteran posed the obvious question for the LCA crowd: What the hell was he doing on a tour with longtime nemesis LL Cool J? After all, the bicoastal rappers were once locked in a notorious hip-hop beef.

“We’re all good now,” Ice-T said. “It’s the culture. We battled and got it over with.”

Ice-T gave the night its injection of West Coast flavor in a 20-minute performance that included his career-defining “O.G. Original Gangster.”

He was part of a guest cast that included Chicago’s Common, whose highlights included “The Light,” along with a spunky MC Lyte (“Cold Rock a Party”) and the melodic, rapid-fire Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, the Cleveland quintet and longtime Detroit favorite whose intricate ensemble vocals shined on “Thuggish Ruggish Bone” and other ‘90s staples.

Detroit love was in the house

Trick Trick, Royce 5’9” and Coney Island diners were among the Motor City fixtures to get shoutouts from the stage Friday. But the Detroit king of the evening was late producer J. Dilla.

Common recounted the day in downtown Detroit when Dilla first played him the beat that became “Thelonius,” the lightning-in-a-bottle track that would eventually feature on both of their acclaimed 2000 albums: Common’s “Like Water for Chocolate” and Slum Village’s “Fantastic, Vol. 2.”

Slum rapper T3 was a surprise guest later Friday night, joining Common and the Roots for the Dilla-produced Slum Village throwback “Fall in Love.”

Some LCA concertgoers may have been hoping for — even expecting — a cameo from Eminem: Earlier Friday, LL Cool J had posted pictures of himself with the Detroit star downtown, plugging a ticket promotion at Eminem's Mom's Spaghetti eatery. But that potential bring-down-the-house moment didn’t materialize onstage.

Hip-hop nostalgia was in full effect

Coming a week to the day after hip-hop celebrated its 50^th anniversary, the LCA show was a living tribute to the music, including a nonstop scroll featuring names of key artists on video displays around the stage.

The Roots and Common linked up late in the show for a hip-hop 101 medley of rap classics, including the rapper’s own 2002 collaboration with Erykah Badu, “Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop).”

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: LL Cool J's hip-hop celebration plays LCA with dose of Detroit love