So What's The Best J. Cole Album So Far?
The J. Cole hype couldn't be greater right now after the 4th major album release from J. Cole, For Your Eyez Only. Many are expecting it to be album of the year with only 2 songs released. They are also expecting it to be "another classic" [See Social Media] and it made us think. What is the best J. Cole album so far?
3 - Cole World: Sideline Story. Sideline Story is the hands down laziest album for me. When I heard Cole say he added songs from his mixtape to this album because he felt enough people didn't hear them, I immediately lost my interest in buying it. Emcee's shouldn't do that. Sorry. I toss this one to the bottom of Cole releases because I heard a lot of it before the wave got real.
It's interesting going back and listening to this album now. It's difficult to replicate the hunger you hear in the very young J. Cole's voice in nearly each song. This is often the case with many rappers when juxtaposing their early catalog over their more recent works. The effect this has is ultimately subjective, but for us it's clear young Simba was not yet the king.
[iframe id="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZOrPNbKHQm8"]
2 - 2014 Forest Hills Drive. The Platinum with no features album. The album that inspired a bunch of jaded, misguided and misspelled memes for the last 2 years. It's not that this album is whack necessarily, it just doesn't move me. The middle of this album made me dose off. I'm not a fan of the singing efforts. Tracks like "St. Tropez" and "Hello" come of as somewhat forced and, as a result, slightly in-genuine.
What's more, tracks that were clearly intended to be in more of a pure hip hop vein, like "Fire Squad" turned out to be little more than filler. To be clear, Cole had hits on this project. "Wet Dreamz" and "Tale of 2 Citiez" are both catchy and have a well-rounded appeal. "January 28th" and "No Role Modelz" are anthems in their own right as well. To us, they were just too few and far between to justify ranking this album higher up. To the Cole Stans, we're sorry, but 2014 a little boring. We credit cole for giving us a bunch of new music though.
[iframe id="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ijy2GFWqeAs"]
1 - Born Sinner: This album was a hype beast dream. New Rappers, good features, Hit singles and was deemed a classic because everyone hated Yeezus and didn't pay attention to The Gifted by Wale. This album is the best of the 3 to me because it's the best representation of what Cole can do. Songs like "Land of the Snakes" serve as a verbal exhibition for Cole, with a concise, driven flow over an equally driven instrumental.
"Trouble" was a favorite off of the album, featuring a menacing instrumental with Cole's cocky humor at play on top of it. Born Sinner made it clear that he can make hits if he wants. He can really rap. He has the potential to be a great producer. The subject matter isn't that great or diverse, but I honestly feel the release of 2014 FHD builds the appreciation of Born Sinner. It's number 1 for me, but not cause it is "so much better" than the other releases around it.
[iframe id="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UCjl3xEdA_k"]
Check out more on Cole here.
[Mixtape] J. Cole: "The Revenge of the Dreamers"
J. Cole easily made one of the albums of the year in his 2013 release, Born Sinner which brought few accolades but made up for the slight disappointment of his debut studio project, Cole World: The Sideline Story. It seems as though Cole is already back on his grind, as he celebrated his 29th birthday yesterday with the release of a fresh new project, The Revenge of the Nerds. The release of the project also coincided with Cole's announcement of a partnership between his Dreamville imprint and Interscope, which seems to have championed the artist-turned-label-head situation. The release, similar to t9th Wonder's JAMLA Is The Squad project which also dropped last night, is a sort of sampler platter for the artists workign with Cole on Dreamville, including the endlessly talented Omen and Bas.
It's interesting that Cole went the Interscope route, having just had one of the craziest concert experiences last night at Madison Square Garden where Kendrick, fresh off the Grammys, showed up to perform "Forbidden Fruit", "Backseat Freestyle" and "m.A.A.d. City" before turning to the crowd to say, ""[Cole] is one of the first cats to welcome me with open arms in this music business when I ain't know sh-- about it," he said. "So believe that, this is not no regular rapper friendship, this is my f---ing brother right here, J. Cole." Jay Z joined him onstage for "PSA" before handing him his original Roc-A-Fella Jesus piece and performing "FuckwithmeyouknowIgotit". As if that wasn't enough, Cole ended the concert by performing songs off The Revenge of The Dreamers, of which he had just showered the crowd with hard copies. Not a bad birthday, but what's he going to do for the big 3-0?
Full stream/download below with a video of J.Cole's gift from HOV below.
[youtube id="QMkb5NClSm0" align="center"]