Yet Cole has reached a point of his career that millions of people will listen to his music regardless of its hype and eventual appraisal - he would most likely argue that’s the point - and I can admire his efforts to produce the closest thing we have to mainstream wholesome rap. Cause while for better or for worse the rap community throughout its history has involved rappers taking shots at one another through their music - and the higher up the totem pole the rappers fighting are - the more entertaining it can be. Sure, his old lyrics can be problematic (see his lines on gay men in “ Villuminati”) but Cole was more fun when he could be socially conscious while simultaneously talking game. I miss when he’d “ brag like HOV,” hype up his own beats like in “G.O.M.D,” and power trip through the rap game. In their minds the artist matters more than the art. Cole fanboy logic follows a dangerous emerging pattern of fans blindlessly worshipping whatever their favorite artist drops without even attempting to objectively listen to the music. That’s what Cole did on Forest Hills for god’s sake. Rappers can be honest, cohesive and still make their tracks pop off. If I bring any of this up to a fanboy they will say that “I don’t understand his evolution” or “he’s putting honesty before cohesion.” It doesn’t need to be so black and white. The production on this album is as clean as ever but it doesn’t pop out of the speakers like in Cole’s previous albums. The story of his friend and themes of racial injustice take a backseat randomly throughout the album, whether in the not-so-subtle song “Foldin Clothes” or the regrettably corny “She’s Mine” parts 1 and 2. Although a majority of the songs on 4 Your Eyez Only contain lyrics written by Cole’s dead friend, it’s still Cole rapping them and adding his own thematically similar lyrics on top of them. The most significant line of the song comes when Cole is dissing Wale “Always worried bout the critics who ain’t never fuckin’ did it // I write what’s in my heart, don’t give a fuck who fuckin’ with it.” So - we were led to wonder - what is in J. Soon after “Everybody Dies” came “False Prophets” - which includes disses at Kanye and Wale.
J COLE IMMORTAL FLP FULL
It looked like we had another album full of meticulously produced shit-talking on the way from J. Right after he makes the statement, the music video for “Everybody Dies” plays. In “4 Your Eyez Only” there’s a point where Cole talks about deciding which tracks to release as singles, and how said choices communicate the statement he tries to make through the album. I agreed with the public sentiment and saw Kendrick and J Cole as the kings of the rap game, so when “Everybody Dies” dropped I ate it up. The final bass drop of “ G.O.M.D” and the lyrics on the outro of “ Fire Squad” were some of my favorite moments in 2014’s music. What’s personally tragic is that I loved J. People won’t want to listen to his music if they’re constantly reminded of their irritating J. Ultimately, this reflects poorly on Cole himself. If you direct attention to the album claiming there’s more to be found, you shouldn’t be mad when people come back empty-handed, especially if you can’t even explain what they missed. Cole has exclusivity to meaningful lyrics is just ignorant.Ĭole’s superfans have accidentally painted him as a pseudo-intellectual since the release of 4 Your Eyes Only. Artists like Mick Jenkins, 6LACK, Kendrick, Joey Bada$$ and Logic have dedicated parts of their careers to creating “woke” music. “Intellectual rap” used to be harder to come by, but rappers can make a career off of social commentary in today’s age. Saying that others have an inability to understand his lyrics is an easy cop out of the conversation and makes the person saying it sound stupid and insecure. The album isn’t that hard to decipher, through interviews, the HBO documentary and multiple listens, it’s easy to see that Cole is spitting social commentary through his dead friend’s story as well as his own. What made me grow to resent it was said fanboys insisting that this album was one of the best albums ever made, or insinuating that the rest of audiences just didn’t understand the intellectual themes of Cole’s work. I still enjoyed the album for what it is. That’s okay, and even Cole admits in his HBO documentary “ 4 Your Eyez Only” that the album is more about what he personally wants to say to his listeners than anything else. “Immortal” low-key slaps and “4 Your Eyez Only” is a well-told story, but, as a whole, the album was underwhelming. Cole’s die hard fans could have stepped back and tried to see the perspective of the rest of the hip-hop community.
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