Before he became the boring lover boy he is today, LL Cool J was bad (the good kind); and he certainly makes no bones about his badness in the song "I'm Bad" and its accompanying video. The flimsy, porn-worthy plot is hilarious; makes you kinda wish more rappers could add this campy sense of levity to their videos these days. See, apparently some nefarious goomba drug dealers have kidnapped LL's lady friend because she put up some posters that say drugs are bad! So you know LL is gonna gather his crew for a showdown. And also the police are looking for him for some reason. Damn. Mostly, of course, the video is a showcase for the rapper's outsized personality and swagger '' indeed, by some accounts Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin were convinced to sign LL to the nascent Def Jam label simply based on the power of the 16-year-old's braggadocio. "Black sweatsuit, gold chain and sneakers" '' unmistakable! (Click here for a higher quality, non-embeddable version)

***Note: Vintage Video is a regular post in which we explore the wasteland of old music videos available on YouTube for insight, oddity, hilarity, current relevancy or just plain awesomeness).