The curious case of Jermaine Cole
J.Cole is one of the most difficult artists to accurately judge. Ask some, his music is dry and boring, ask others, his music is of such depth and is so profound in nature that you need to have a certain IQ to appreciate it. Even within his fanbase there’s a disparity in the perception of how his career has panned out. Depending on which fan you ask he varies from the leader of his generation to someone that hasn’t quite fulfilled the potential he showed during his mixtape era, a watermark he’s yet to better now a decade removed. Around the North Carolina native revolves a constant discussion of where he is, in relation to where he supposedly should be in his career. Rather than letting all of these conflicting perceptions dictate his creative direction, J.Cole has learnt that to reach fulfillment he must free himself from the quicksand of outside opinion that paves the road to rap game dominance. To become the best version of himself he instead sought gratification outside of music; a more personal and intimate brand of happiness that he has in turn used to fuel his music. This journey of self-discovery and maturation has effected his music for the better for the most part, but it’s also come to have an adverse effect.
While some say J.Cole’s music is ordinary, the story of his career is anything but. From his earning himself a Roc Nation deal by hunting down and handing Jay-Z his CD personally, (yeah I know, an actual CD; it’s how things were done back in ’09 apparently), it was clear from the outset that Cole’s hunger to see his talent recognised was different. It’s this hunger that permeates his early work; listen to 2Face or his show-stealing verse on Looking For Trouble, both from the classic 2010 mixtape Friday Night Lights and you can hear a desire for success that is visceral and vivid. Put simply, he wanted it. 3 albums and 4 years later and he’d achieved it. If I say ‘2014 Forest Hills Drive’ the first thing you’re bound to think is ‘double platinum with no features’. This meme became the talking point of the album, rather than the narrative of man’s maturation and the discovering of a newfound perspective. Instead of talks of being the rightful owner of the rap game crown and the boasts we heard during his mixtape era, FHD spoke of snatching the crown only to destroy it, declaring it nothing more than a distraction from life’s truly important things. The success of what is widely deemed J.Cole’s best album is at odds with its telling of a figure who’s grown beyond needing validation from hiphop.
The reconfiguration of J.Cole’s aims in music and in life made 2014 Forest Hills Drive arguably the best project of his career. So it’s understandable that his projects thereafter have followed a similar formula. 4 Your Eyes Only and KOD are both conceptual albums that don’t attempt to serve anyone outside of Cole himself and his fanbase. And both bore success; going platinum, again with no features. Commercially Cole has been killing it for the past few years, exceeding expectations at every turn. Creatively though, he’s got comfortable and maybe even complacent. With no features from other rappers to provide competition, and him rapping over almost exclusively his own production, neither of Cole’s latest projects have reached the heights of FHD. That’s not to say that either are bad projects. KOD in particular, which when you consider the tragic drug-related deaths of so many artists, is an album that’s rhetoric about addiction was delivered at a crucial time. Nevertheless, for Cole to improve on what he has already delivered he will have to challenge himself. Nobody in any field has ever improved by staying in their comfort zone. For those of us that want more from the self-proclaimed Grown Simba, his activity post-KOD has given reason for hope.
The stretch between 2018’s KOD and 2019’s Revenge of the Dreamers compilation saw Cole go on an awesome feature run, popping up on tracks with artists from the likes of Royce Da 5'9 to 6lack to Anderson .Paak. Not only did Cole show his versatilty and display more range than he has in years, he shone on these outings; outmatching almost every rapper that hosted him on their track and seamlessly complimenting the RnB or soul singers on their songs. This period showed that there was a newfound fire in Cole’s stomach, exemplified most aptly by his turn on 21 Savage’s A Lot, a verse that may have won him the guest verse of the year title if Jay-Z hadn’t blacked out on What’s Beef from Meek Mill’s Championships. Nonetheless, it was clear that something had unseated Cole from his own elegantly embroidered and finely adorned chair and caused him to longingly eye the throne he had once sworn he was the heir to.
At this point, despite his huge success, two of his peers from within his own rap class that have made stronger claims to being the best rapper of their generation. Drake has sold about 46 trillion records and Kendrick has consistently stunned us with his musical endeavours while J.Cole has for the most part sat somewhere in the middle, not competing on either the commercial or critical plane, not because of lack talent but more because of a lack of trying. He will undoubtedly carry with him what he’s learnt about the game, lessons about how even at its headiest heights success won’t satisfy an insatiable appetite to achieve more and can’t provide the most profound level of fulfillment, the kind that comes from appreciating who and what you have around you. But the number of rap acts that have reached Cole’s level and matched his staying-power is maybe as low as a single digit figure. So to put a cap on your ambitions, to not see how far you can take it without it overwhelming your personal life would be nothing short of criminal, and it looks like Cole has finally acknowledged this. During his come up, he nicknamed himself Simba and since, his traversing of the road to becoming hiphop royalty has proved to be full of surprising lessons. But it seems Cole recognises that if he is to fulfil his potential and reign over everything the light touches, the time to put people on notice is now.
