With his third album, the North Carolina rapper J. Cole is certain he’s made his classic; he’ll tell you as much partway through the 15-minute credit roll “Note to Self”. In its quest to canonize, the record eschews both singles and guests: It’s a bold move, and where it floats, it soars, but it flops gloriously when it doesn’t.
J. Cole is a student of hip-hop, the kind who moves to New York to stalk Jay-Z for an opportunity to rap for him, peppers his lyrics with nods to the greats, and pens an apology to Nas when his biggest single comes across as too poppy. Cole is aware of the structure and pace of good rap albums and anxious to apply them to his own music. For his third record, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, he channels the nostalgic self-mythology of Jay-Z’s Black Album. The cover is shot at his childhood home as Eminem did on the Marshall Mathers LP. The tracklist swaps s’s for z’s (“Wet Dreamz”, “A Tale of 2 Citiez”, “Love Yourz”) like 2pac’s All Eyez on Me. With 2014, Cole is certain he’s made his classic; he’ll tell you as much partway through the 15-minute credit roll “Note to Self”, which apes Kanye West’s joyous, candid College Dropoutcloser “Last Call”. Problem is, Cole hasn’t earned it yet.
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J. Cole is a workmanlike MC, a good-natured populist grappling with the ridiculousness of sudden celebrity. He makes passable albums with memorable singles. He’s great at synthesizing everyman relationship woes into terse pop nuggets. He works well with guests; his collaborations with Drake, Missy Elliott, and TLC are highlights in his growing body of work, and he gets along so well with Kendrick Lamar that the duo is rumored to have clandestinely recorded an EP together. In its quest to canonize Cole, 2014 Forest Hills Drive eschews both singles and guests. It’s a block of Cole raps and Cole hooks served mostly over Cole beats. Bold move, and where it floats, it soars, but it flops gloriously when it doesn’t.
The laughable wordplay fails of mixtapes albums past (“My money like a senior, watch it graduate,” “Cole heating up like that leftover lasagna”) are thankfully absent, but Cole isn’t yet sharp enough of a storyteller to carry a full album on his own. “Wet Dreamz” recounts his first time having sex in lurid detail, from lying to a girl about his prowess to looking at porn for pointers to finding out the girl’s been lying, too. It’s relatable but hardly the kind of story you want to hear more than once. “No Role Modelz” parlays a suspicion about a hookup being a golddigger into a tirade about black women lacking respectable public figures, crudely suggesting that “she’s shallow but the pussy deep.” (For all the talk of Cole’s enlightenment he’s a perfect brute when it comes to women, and “No Role Modelz” is something of a tacit admission.) 2014 Forest Hills Drive often plays at a depth it never delivers.
Still, ceding an entire hour to a rapper who works best in short bursts works better here than anyone could’ve expected. “03’ Adolescence” flips the classic rags-to-riches narrative inside out as Cole starts to reminisce about how hard he had it growing up only to get a chin check from a friend whose future isn’t half as bright. “G.O.M.D.”, “Fire Squad”, and “A Tale of 2 Citiez” all flash Cole’s technical excellence, while “Intro”, “Apparently”, and “St. Tropez” emote through his gruff singing voice. The production here is never less than delightful; Cole’s own beats run coyly referential samples through milky instrumental embellishments. “Wet Dreamz” is an adept “Impeach the President” flip, and “St. Tropez” reimagines Mobb Deep’s “Give Up the Goods (Just Step)” as sedate, orchestral R&B.
2014 Forest Hills Drive is Cole planting himself in the pantheon of rap greats, a volley to the spike of Kendrick Lamar’s “Control” verse. He gets more than a little ahead of himself, though, claiming to be better than Slick Rick, LL Cool J, Rakim, and Big Daddy Kane on “January 28th”. Kane and Rakim’s flows were tighter, LL’s swagger is inimitable, and Rick’s stories surge with a purpose nothing in J. Cole’s canon can muster. This self-aggrandizing pageantry is a ultimately bad look on a guy who earns his keep speaking to the struggles of the common man, and these songs work best when they’re not busy telling you how good they think they are. 2014 Forest Hills Drive is a decent album selling itself as great. It wraps itself in the garments of a classic, but you can see that the tailoring is off.
Back to homeIt's been a year and a half since J. Cole dropped his Forest Hills Drive album on the rap world's heads, and today his manager, Ib, posted on Instagram that FHD had surpassed 2 million copies sold, officially putting Cole on that double-platinum pedestal:
It's an impressive feat in an age where albums rarely go platinum, let alone double, although the RIAA's new rules, which count song streams towards album sales, will certainly mean we'll be seeing more platinum plaques handed out than in previous years. (By contrast, Kendrick's To Pimp a Butterfly went platinum earlier this year, while Drake's Views went platinum its first week and is a lock to do double platinum by the end of 2016.)
The real lesson here is not that Cole is now a commercially elite rapper, although that's true, or that he did it with no features, which is also true. For me the takeaway is that after years of bending his sound towards radio and trying to please Jay and Roc Nation, he finally found his true breakthrough success when he made a project that ignored external pressure and held the closest to his own vision.
They'll be popping bottles in Dreamville tonight, and they deserve it, but this is the music industry, and the music industry never stops. So now there's only one question left - where's the new album at?
By Nathan S, the managing editor of DJBooth and a hip-hop writer. His beard is awesome. This is his Twitter. Image via JColeMusic.