LL Cool J has raised $8 million in a Series A funding round led by investment firm Raine Ventures to expand his Rock The Bells brand.
“This funding will help us accelerate our growth and team-building efforts to make sure we can further uplift the people and culture at the forefront of Hip-Hop through exciting e-commerce collaborations, storytelling, and experiences,” LL Cool J said in a statement announcing the funding round.
Additional investors in the round include venture capital firm M13, Willoughby Capital Holdings and Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang. Rock The Bells’ current investors include Irving Azoff, Piedmont Capital Partners, Bozoma Saint, Mark Cuban, Egon Durban and Henry Louis Gates Jr.
The veteran rap star and actor founded in 2018 as a content and commerce brand dedicated to Generation X hip-hop, honoring the “culture and the core elements of Hip-Hop through a modern lens.”
“I wanted to have a place where the trailblazing icons and the pioneers that shaped the culture could get their love, could get their respect, and I wanted the culture as a whole to get the respect that I believe it deserves,” he told Revolt at the time. “There was a certain point when it felt like classic and timeless hip hop was kind of being marginalized and treated like some sort of pop culture movement and it’s not that. It informs pop culture, but it’s bigger than that. Hip hop culture has a global impact and an influence on the whole world in a major way, and I didn’t want people to forget that.”
