LL Cool J will become first rapper at Kennedy Center Honors
Rapper and actor LL Cool J will be the first rapper honored at the Kennedy Center Honors. “I am blown away,” he responded.
This is the biggest musical award you can receive,” the Queens-born musician and actor said by phone from Los Angeles, where he stars in the CBS hit “NCIS: Los Angeles.” “To be recognized by your country, and to be able to represent hip-hop as an art form is amazing. I’m surprised, grateful, humbled and honored.”
The annual awards for lifetime artistic achievement — set for Dec. 3 in the Kennedy Center Opera House — will be the first under President Trump, who angered many in the arts when he introduced a budget that called for dismantling the National Endowment for the Arts. Although given by the Kennedy Center, the Honors weekend features a dinner at the State Department and a White House reception before the culmination in the Opera House, where the honorees watch from the president’s box as their peers celebrate their legacies. The show will be broadcast at 9 p.m. Dec. 26 on CBS.
