Deep Album Cuts Vol. 333: J. Cole
J. Cole has been talking for a while now about his next album, The Fall Off, being his final album. I don't really believe him, though, rap retirements are almost always fake or don't last. Either way, though, he's got a good-sized catalog to look back at now.
2. Never Told
3. In The Morning (featuring Drake)
4. Rise And Shine
5. Land Of The Snakes
6. Born Sinner (featuring James Fauntleroy)
7. Chaining Day
8. Runaway
9. G.O.M.D.
10. A Tale Of 2 Citiez
11. Fire Squad
12. Hello
13. Immortal
14. Change (featuring Ari Lennox
15. Photograph
16. The Cut Off
17. Pride Is The Devil (featuring Lil Baby)
18. Amari
19. Let Go My Hand (featuring Bas and 6lack)
Tracks 1, 2, 3 and 4 from Cole World: The Sideline Story (2011)
Tracks 5, 6, 7 and 8 from Born Sinner (2013)
Tracks 9, 10, 11 and 12 from 2014 Forest Hills Drive (2014)
Tracks 13 and 14 from 4 Your Eyez Only (2016)
Tracks 15 and 16 from KOD (2018)
Tracks 17, 18 and 19 from The Off-Season (2021)
J. Cole has often been looked as part of the "big three" of his generation of rappers along with Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Between Drake's record-shattering chart success and Kendrick's rapturous critical acclaim and Grammys and Pulitzer Prize, Cole's the one whose position in that firmament is a little less certain, who seems to be more anxious about claiming his spot. He just got his first #1 on the Hot 100 with his appearance on Drake's "First Person Shooter" (Drake's 14th #1), a song where he directly acknowledges the "big three" talk.
In the storied "blog rap" era when those guys and their contemporaries were getting started, I really rooted for J. Cole. I thought his production was really impressive and that Cole World: The Sideline Story was one of the best major label debuts out of all those guys. Everybody was angling to be the next Jay-Z or get a Jay-Z co-sign, and Cole was the one who was actually signed to Roc Nation, but he did a pretty good job of establishing himself as his own man, no Memphis Bleek. That album hasn't aged especially well, though, it very much feels like Take Care and good kid, m.A.A.d city changed the landscape and Cole had to adapt to it. I still really like his beats on Cole World, though, as well as "Never Told," one of the few Cole album tracks produced by No ID. As I learned when I interviewed No ID recently, he offered a lot of beats to Cole before they went to other artists, including Big Sean's "Control" and Saba's "Back In Office."
J. Cole started to seem like a major star when Born Sinner outsold Yeezus, but it also felt like this depressing moment where Kanye made a bold, risky album and people preferred a Kanye-influenced guy sticking to '90s rap nostalgia on an album full of samples from Ready To Die, Midnight Marauders and Aquemini. "Let Nas Down" is the most famous deep cut on Born Sinner but I hate it and everything it symbolizes, Cole making a decent single in "Work Out" and then sheepishly apologizing for it.
Cole really secured his spot, though, when he released 2014 Forest Hills Drive with no guests and little advance promotion and it became his biggest album. J. Cole fans boasted that he was "platinum with no features" so much that it became a meme, and "No Role Modelz" has become his signature hit, a song I find deeply tiresome. Going back to the deep cuts, though, 2014 Forest Hills Drive is definitely his best album, even if I would not join fans in calling it one of the best rap albums of the decade. I feel like he's always falling just short of dazzling like a true great rapper, the flows are rarely surprising and his jokes almost never land. Now and then, though, he pulls off some pretty impressive verses.
"Change" might be my favorite J. Cole song, or at least my favorite on this playlist. J. Cole was still on his "no features" bullshit on 4 Your Eyez Only so Ari Lennox isn't officially given a feature credit on that song, but she really makes that song for me. KOD is by far my least favorite J. Cole album, though, there are just so many embarrassing lyrical and musical ideas on that record that it was hard to to even pick out tracks for this. I really liked The Off-Season, though, that's the one that gives me hope that The Fall Off might actually be what Cole is hyping it up to be.
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on Tuesday, November 21, 2023 at 10:59 AM.
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