It's a Cole World, We're Just Living In It by Zac Pestine

Whether it be writing rhymes, vacationing, signing athletes, or marriage, Shawn Corey Carter, also known as Jay-Z, does things on the grandest scale possible.  It should then come as no surprise that he has also discovered the immense talent of Jermaine Cole.  Before J. Cole had released his debut album in the fall of 2012, big things were expected of him.  That is a logical necessity of signing with Hova.  With an awe-inspiring flow and top-notch word play on Jay-Z’s song “A Star is Born,” combined with the fierce panache of “Who Dat,” in conjunction with the massive success of his first few mix tapes, J. Cole became the Bryce Harper of the rap game.  He was able to hit 500 foot home runs as a youngin’, and the rap world eagerly anticipated his first full length studio album.

J. Cole’s rookie album, Cole World: A Sideline Story, was rife with emotion, pain, depth, wordsmithery, and flowtasticness.  However, it lacked the cohesion, both lyrically and sonically, inherent in legendary albums.  While clearly demonstrating his rap acumen, J. Cole’s first album at times suffered from ennui, and overall lacked a clear thesis or message.  At some junctions, the album was poppy, at others, galvanizing, and yet often lethargic as well.  While the album may have garnered Cole a Rookie of the Year trophy, it was obviously manufactured by a rookie.  As an audience, we recognized the talent we had seen on his mix tapes, but we still pined to know who J. Cole was as an artist.  What was his identity? 

After a few more mix tapes and dispersed ballads, I was still at a loss for how to describe the persona of someone whom I considered one of my favorite artists in the game.  But after giving Born Sinner the once-over (well actually I have listened to it all the way through about ten times now), I feel that I am now equipped to answer that question.

Let me start by addressing a feat of J. Cole’s that has really impressed me.  It is no secret that geography plays a massive role in defining any artist, as both their life experiences and their sound directly emanate from the places they call home.  Most artists can draw on a rich geographical history to stake out a spot in that tradition.  Certainly every rap fan is familiar with the resumes of the West Coast, East Coast, Dirty South, and even the Midwest rappers. 

However, before J. Cole’s rise to stardom, it is a rather good guess that very few people had even heard of Fayetteville, North Carolina, the town that he heralds from.  But after giving J. Cole sufficient play time, one can’t help but associate him with his town (for he says it about as many times as Wale says his own name).  J. Cole knows that he doesn’t fit into the any of the aforementioned locations.  This could be a source of frustration for many aspiring young rappers.  But J. Cole turns negative into positive, using his geographic isolation to draw upon all histories and become an amalgam of the greats.  In his song “I Really Mean It (not off Born Sinner)” J. Cole begins with the line, “They say I’m the down south Nas, the east coast Pac, the Carolina Andre, the Fayattenam Kanye.”  Ever a student (he graduated magna cum laude from St. John’s University a few years back), J. Cole has made a collage of the greats, adapting their strengths and making them his own.

But what defines J. Cole?  What makes him distinct from the others?  Why will we remember him fifteen years after he retires?

Well, let’s turn to Born Sinner to answer that question.

This is a concept album.  It has an overarching and cogent narrative that helps define who J. Cole is at this moment.  The story starts with “Villuminati,” a track that sets the pace for the rest of the album.  We first get a feel for J. Cole’s bravado, as he asserts that sometimes he “brags like Hov.”  That statement is repeated more than several times, amid a background of the “Born sinner, the opposite of a winner” line from Biggie’s “Juicy” and becomes an augury for the egotism to come.  In the past, the themes of J. Cole’s mix tapes and albums have often oscillated between altruism or otherwise profound messages, and a more sinister, bragadocious look on the life of a rap star, replete with fast money, fast cars, and fast women.  Here, the tone is set for an album that highlights that his past errors are not isolated incidents that try a person in his or her new environment.  The lust for these forbidden fruits is rather a part of J. Cole’s nature, and this theme is portentous of his proclivity for the unoriginal sin that he illuminates throughout the album.

In the next track, “LAnd of the Snakes,” the “Carolina Andre” samples Outkast’s “The Art of Storytelling Pt. 1” to recount how his life has significantly altered from his humble beginnings in North Carolina through his journey to and navigation through fame, and ultimately into the vices and frivolity of a Los Angeles, the Land of the Snakes.  This album is teeming with biblical references, and as anyone who has ever watched Entourage knows, Vegas is not the only metropolis deserving of the moniker Sin City.  His retinue in the LAnd abets and enhances his immorality, and Cole seems to embrace this fact with open arms.

“Power Trip,” the album’s lead single, beguiled me upon first listen before I had heard the album in full.  As a YouTube video, the song seems to be a better than average radio hit with above par word play.  Yet, its lyrics seemed to be the trite “I’ve been through a lot of women, but I really like you” that is a cliché mainstay of the airwaves today.  But in the context of the album, J. Cole is asserting his untrustworthiness over Miguel’s repeated question, “Would you believe me if I said I’m in love?”  Here, J. Cole is aware of his overt polygamy, and while temporarily entranced by a single member of the opposite sex, is fully cognizant of the crush’s mortality.

“C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me),” one of the most ubiquitous adlibs in the hip hop world, has found its way into the lyrics of rap songs since the Wu-Tang Clan brought the acronym to the fore two decades ago.  But whereas Wu-Tang asserted that while cash may rule everything around them, it doesn’t rule them, on “Mo’ Money,” J. Cole responds that it isn’t so easy not to kowtow to the dollar.  While Cole doesn’t necessarily glorify the power of money, his own deference to its power pushes forth the theme of the lusts and gluttonies that have become all too natural to him.

Towards the middle of the album, J. Cole reaches the apex of his transparent moral turpitude and egocentrism on “Trouble.”  His self-described “god flow” has landed him fame, stardom, and money, causing women to flock to him.  The only reservations he maintains throughout his sexual escapades are that these  women may grow attached to him and he will have to exert effort in a relationship and spend money and time with them.  We see him finally grow self-conscious of his amoral excursions when he entertains the idea that his actions may lead to trouble. 

After J. Cole has become ostensibly inured to sin, the narrative begins its descent back into the hangover of paranoia, self consciousness, repentance, and ultimately redemption.  On “Runaway,” J. Cole appears to want to retreat from his quotidian bacchanalia.  The cadence of the song is tempered.  The hook, which repeats the line “Runaway, runaway, runaway, runaway, I’m holding on desperately” is dreamlike.  Cole’s assertion that there are no happy endings to life, only pure beginnings followed by “sinning and fake repentance” leads us to wonder if his upcoming apologies are authentic or self-serving.  He grows blatantly self-conscious of his misguided path, questioning if even the murderers, whores, and people having wild affairs while on tour (himself) can receive salvation, as his preacher says.  Cole reintroduces us to the world of sin that he has been thrust into and then pines to runaway from.  He is beginning to get his conscience back.

“She Knows” is a chilling take on the paranoia inherent in infidelity.  The song begins with “Damned if I do, Damned if I don’t,” asserting the double edged sword of passing up the most aesthetically pleasing women that throw themselves his way in favor of remaining faithful to his current significant other has its own obvious pitfalls.  The title works on two levels, one in the guessing game of the fact that his significant other knows of his affairs.  But simultaneously, the snaky woman might have knowledge of his relationship, yet presses him to err anyway.  We see the tension that has plagued humanity since Adam and Eve bit the apple, effectively naturalizing our task to overcome the urge to sin. 

The continued rejection of sinful celebrity life is instantiated in “Rich Niggaz.”  Cole immediately rejects how wealth changes people for the worse, taking umbrage with those who garishly flaunt the wealth that once remained out of his reach.  Soon after, he takes a trip down memory lane to the time before he too was altered by his waxing bank account.   He ultimately concludes that while he appreciates the fact that he has made it in the exclusive rap industry, he fears that he will become a replica of the very people he is lamenting, a mirror of himself on the earlier part of the album.  He rejects numbness to morality and refuses to sell his soul.  It is also noteworthy that J. Cole’s flow on this song is just about as good as it has ever been.  He fits an incredible number of rhymes into a diminutive bar count, offering a complex rhyme scheme on par with any hip hop heavyweight.

On “Forbidden Fruit,” Cole retells the story of Adam and Eve, insinuating that after original sin, they were forced to raise themselves in a precarious world.  Likewise, Cole has had to do the same as his “only father was time.”  Not only has Cole helped to raise himself (he did have a mother), but he now places himself on Kanye West’s status in the rap world, speeding up his album release date to compete with Kanye for sales.  While the album is laden with Adam and Eve references, this song is especially overt. 

The idyllic tone on “Chaining Day” exemplifies J. Cole’s yearning for simpler days and for a less convoluted, lustful life.  He begins the song with “Look at me, pathetic nigga, this chain that I bought, You mix greed, pain, and fame, this the heinous result, Let these words be the colors, I’m just painting my heart, I’m knee-deep in the game and it ain’t what I thought.”  He delves into his addiction for the purchase of whips and chains.  His infatuation with all things shiny is so extreme that he installed diamonds in the hair of his Jesus piece.  These whips and chains are his new form of slavery, a life that he agonizingly proclaims that he chose for himself.

I will not spend too much time on “Ain’t That Some Shit,” because apart from its awesome flow, I don’t seem to think that it fits in with the cohesion of the album as a whole, though it would make a great bonus track.

In the late 90’s, the super trio of T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chilli, aka TLC, released their heartfelt song “Unpretty,” a ballad about a relationship in which the man does not recognize the inner nor outer beauty of his girlfriend, always seeking to alter and enhance her physical features.  J. Cole calls upon TLC to sing the chorus to his redemption anthem “Crooked Smile.”  Accepting women for who they are has been a common theme of J. Cole’s throughout his career, yet this theme had remained conspicuously absent on Born Sinner, as Cole’s sins did not leave him much room to address such lofty subjects.  But this song marks the official retreat from his life of sin.  This song is a statement that we are each born differently on the inside and out, and the only thing we can do with our natural abilities is to refine them and make the best of them.  We are neither born sinners nor as righteous people.  We are born as human beings who have the choice to do right or wrong, and on this journey, J. Cole is no longer capitulating to the wrong.

If I may be frank, “Let Nas Down” is my favorite track on this album.  On it, J. Cole recounts the pain he felt after Nas scoffed at “Work Out,” J. Cole’s most poppy and radio friendly song to date.  What I find particularly interesting in this song is that J. Cole can be seen as a proxy for Jay-Z, highlighting the fact that Jay wouldn’t put out Cole’s first album without a single like “Work Out.”  Inevitably, this song disappointed Nas.  The Jay-Z/ Nas rivalry is one of the most notorious feuds in the history of hip hop, and J. Cole has found himself pitted in the middle of the two rap greats.  J. Cole’s conclusion is that he will not put such songs out anymore, but not before he quips at Nas, “I mean you made ‘You owe me dog, I thought that you could relate.”  This line demonstrates the brazenness that J. Cole has taken on, placing himself on an equal playing field as rap’s most vaunted legends.

“Born Sinner,” the eponymous conclusion of J. Cole’s sophomore album, is an apt finale for this heartfelt rollercoaster ride.  Amid an emotional chorus acknowledging that we are born with sin but can choose an alternative road, Cole again recalls his earlier, more innocuous days and reflects on the perpetual strains of stardom.

So who is J. Cole?

Jermaine Cole is a mulatto rapper who has graduated from a prestigious university with honors.  He journeys into the rap world from an almost unheard of city and has become the protégé of this world’s biggest magnate.  But we knew all that already.  What we didn’t know were the day-to-day struggles that Cole is pressed with, that he often succumbs to, and that he sometimes overcomes. 

With Born Sinner, J. Cole has outlined not only the essential struggles inherent in making it in the hip hop industry, but the daily tensions that we all face when supplanted in a new environment.  I commend J. Cole for the cohesion of this album.  He has made it a long way.  His immense talent has never been questioned.  But with this album, the wunderkind has clearly graduated.  He has molded that talent into a tangible piece of art that will not be forgotten.  It also should be pointed out that J. Cole fully or partially produced every song on Born Sinner.  I give this album two thumbs up and more.  My only question is, in fifteen years, will the next big thing in rap music be despondent over the fact that “he let Cole down?”  Quite possibly.