LL Cool J

in one more good sign for recent rap, LL Cool J has a Top 20 album out, "Mr. Smith" (Def Jam), more than a decade after his first release. Just maintaining platinum sales -- that is, a viable career -- for so long is unprecedented in rap. His snapping beats sound dated, but steady and built to last. Significantly, Cool J is most often a love man, not a gangsta or a political activist. Yet he raps, not croons, his sex ballads, and Boyz II Men seem much more simpatico guests with him than they do with, say, Mariah Carey. Cool J is proof that rap can be an enduring performer's idiom, and he ranks with the NBA's Kareem and the Chief as a pioneer at hanging in there.