Donte Hawkins
J. Cole. J. Cole. “J Motha Lovin’ Cole.” This dude is something else.
For those of you who don’t know who J. Cole is, he is Jay-Z’s prodigy artist, who signed to Roc-Nation back in 2009. He got a lot of recognition from his first two mix tapes “The Warm up” and “The Come Up,” which were classics, but his fan base really spiked after his third mix tape entitled, “Friday Night Lights”. Since then, people have been waiting for his debut album,”Cole World: The Sideline Story,” which was released in stores and on iTunes on September 27th.
Some compared J. Cole to Nas; some said he was like a gangster- version of Drake. Either way, the dude definitely has lyrics that make you want to rewind, and he is definitely one of the few real hip-hop artists we have left.
I’d say his highly anticipated album is pretty damn good. He gave us exactly what you would expect from a rap artist of his caliber. The album has a whole had tracks you can dance to, songs that make you think, and, also, tracks that just drip hip-hop.
However, it’s not perfect, and it didn’t meet all of my expectations. It was hyped up so much that I thought it was going to be a classic first album, like “iLLmatic”, “Ready To Die” or “Enter The 36 Chambers”.
Sadly, it didn’t live up to the hype. I mean, he delivered good music but nothing really different from what we’ve been hearing before his album dropped. I expected him to turn it up and go all out on his first album, but it didn’t really sound like he did. Also, I’m not a huge fan of him singing his own hooks across half of the album, but despite what I don’t like, I say listen for yourself; it’s definitely worth buying, and I give it an 8/10.
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