LL Cool J used to live in Charlotte for some reason
The rapper/actor bought a house on the south side of town in the late '90s. But he wasn't the last major musician to live there.
Hey, LL Cool J is in the news!
That news, that LL Cool J wouldn’t perform in Philadelphia unless a union strike got resolved, led dozens of people to make the exact same joke: Labor Loves Cool James.
This feels as good a time as any to dive a little deeper into a question I got from Rabbit Hole reader Christopher Corcoran:
Can you confirm that LL Cool J lived in the Piper Glen neighborhood in Charlotte back in the late 80s/early 90s?
Buddy, that’s just the beginning.
First off, yes, it’s true. Property records show that James Todd Smith (LL Cool J’s actual name) bought the house with his wife Simone in October 1996 for a little less than $1 million. It’s a big 6,000 square foot stucco-sided home. It backs up to a pond in a neighborhood just up the street from the Trader Joe’s in Piper Glen. There’s a pool and spa out back. It’s like the Ricky Bobby house if it was half the size.
At the time, LL Cool J was an established rapper in his late 20s. He’d released “Mama Said Knock You Out” five years before in 1991. He then went on to acting work, and was playing the lead in the sitcom “In The House,” which had just moved from NBC to UPN. By 1996, he had publicly given up the flashy life. He and his wife had three kids, and just liked to stay at home. One newspaper story from that year marveled at the fact that LL Cool J didn’t even carry a beeper. “I don’t live for that stuff anymore,” he told a reporter. “When I think about buying a car or something, I call my broker and invest it instead.”
So when LL Cool J moved to Charlotte, was it a big deal? I mean, not really? The only story I can find from the era that really mentioned it was in, of all places, the Charlotte Business Journal. “Rapper and sitcom actor LL Cool J is house hunting in Piper Glen,” a brief article stated. “He has his heart set on a property but hasn't come to terms with the seller, we hear.” A year later, in 1997, the Business Journal again mentioned LL Cool J, but only to talk about his house’s landscaping: “His $350,000 package includes a master plan and construction administration, plus what designers call hardscaping, the exterior features such as a pool, spa, architectural lighting and a wall fountain shaped like a flying goose.” That year, the Charlotte Post, a historically Black newspaper, wondered when he might host his first barbecue. In 1998, kids in Charlotte were mesmerized by rumors that the boys from the band Hanson might be moving to Charlotte. One version, which was disproven in the Charlotte Observer, stated that the boys were going to move into LL Cool J’s house in Piper Glen. No, the band said. They were perfectly happy to stay in … Tulsa.
LL Cool J has never stated why he moved to Charlotte (or if he has, I can’t find an interview where he explains it). In any case, he wasn’t a long-term resident. In June 1999, he and his wife sold the house for a little more than they paid for it. After a little more than 2 1/2 years, the LL Cool J era in Charlotte was over.
But!
In March 2007, the folks who bought the house from LL Cool J sold it to … Fantasia Barrino. Fantasia, who grew up in High Point, had won Season 3 of “American Idol” in 2004. Her first album went platinum, and she’d gone on to star in “The Color Purple” on Broadway. She bought the house in Piper Glen for $1.3 million. “The two-story stucco home boasts a large arched wooden front door and is decorated throughout with exotic art,” noted the New York Post. “A [dual] sweeping staircase greets visitors in its front hall, while tropical fish frolic in a massive fish tank upstairs that is visible from the front hall. A large, glass dining room table is adorned with what appears to be a statue of a cougar.”
Almost Immediately, things went south. In 2008, the house went into foreclosure, but was somehow saved at the eleventh hour. And in 2010, the house played a prominent role in “Fantasia For Real,” the VH1 reality show about her life.
At the time, six family members were living in the house with her. “My dream has always been to take care of my family,” she told the Associated Press in 2010. “I said when I won the Idol, I was going to buy a big house and put all my family in it. And I did that.”
Alas, Fantasia and her family did not have a long, happy stay. In 2012, TMZ reported that the home was up for sale for $500,000 less than she’d paid for it. In April 2013, she ended up giving up the home to her bank to avoid foreclosure. She didn’t have to move far, though. Fantasia owned another house nearby in Piper Glen.
After that, some guy bought the house for, like half the price, and has been there ever since.
In the end, this is basically just another confirmation of what real old-school Charlotteans have heard for years. Yes, LL Cool J lived in Charlotte in the late 1990s. And yes, years later, Fantasia Barrino bought LL Cool J’s house. Those facts weren’t exactly secret, but they were out there in an era before every single piece of gossip made its say onto the Internet.
In any event, LL Cool J is not the only celebrity to come and go from Charlotte in the late 1990s. Somehow Carrot Top ended up in town and once went to a pool party at George Shinn’s house. He was not impressed.
Carrot Top lived in Davis Lake in Charlotte.
I was COMPLETELY OBSESSED with LL Cool J when I was a teen. So much that most of the gifts I received from friends at my Sweet 16 were LL-themed. I love that the Charlotte Post mused about when he was going to host his first cookout. That so cultural, so Black American-coded, I absolutely it.