The beginning of “Mama Said Knock You Out,” where LL Cool J calls out, “Come on, man,” might seem like a battle cry, but it was actually never even supposed to be on the song. “He was screaming at the engineer,” says [producer Marley] Marl. “He was yelling at him, because he kept messing up all night. So he was like, ‘Come on, man!’ And the engineer was actually recording vocals, and then the beat dropped. And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s classic.’”
-- from Vanity Fair's 2015 story "Why LL Cool J’s Most Famous Album Almost Never Happened"
