*In his 1997 biography “I Make My Own Rules,” LL Cool J recounts the time his father shot his mother and grandfather because he was bitter about getting a divorce.
LL was a young boy growing up in New York when his parents separated in 1972. His father, James Nunya, was so incensed over the divorce in that he shot his father-in-law in the stomach and estranged wife Ondrea in the back, I Love Old School Music reports. The rapper was age 4 at the time, and both relatives survived their injuries.
According to Hollywood.com, it would be years before LL was able to forgive his father. After his mother moved on, she married an abusive man and drug addict named Roscoe Granger. In his book, LL details (via The Daily Press) how Roscoe constantly beat his mother.
“Roscoe beat me for just about anything. He would beat me for watching television, for lookin’ at him funny, for looking out the window watching other kids play. He didn’t need a good reason. It was just a power trip…” he wrote.
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“He’d make me take off all my clothes and put my arms up on my bunk bed with the `Star Wars’ sheets while he beat me. It was like the scene in `Glory’ when Denzel Washington was getting beat down like a slave, except I was like 8 years old. He’d even pull me out of the shower to get a beating. He didn’t care how he beat me or with what… “
By the time Ondrea left Roscoe, LL said that for him personally, “the damager was done.”
“You know how glad I was to have Roscoe out of my life, but the damage was done. I was doing all kinds of wild things by then and getting in all kinds of trouble.”
LL opened up about Roscoe’s constant abuse during an interview with Oprah back in the day.
“My family is a very interesting family. My mother forgave my father… He came back into my life and made amends for a lot of things by helping to guide me with my music career early on, and kinda helping me in that area (sic). My father made a massive blunder, but he also did a lot of things right,” he said.
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