J. Cole’s Achilles Heel…
Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 at 7:26 pm
Views: 4320
So J. Cole’s debut album Cole World: The Sideline Story leaked, and I kind of came to the conclusion that Cole has a weakness as of right now. The dude is boring. I’m literally yawning while listening to the album. Can he rap good? Yes. However that does not necessarily translate into Mr. Cole being an interesting artist. When you watch a J. Cole video, do you say to yourself “that kid is a star“! If you have any sense, the answer to that question would be no. I’m not saying J. Cole can’t become a star. He just isn’t one as of yet.
Plus there are two other problems I have with J. Cole. Most importantly he does not seem to have really evolved that much as an artist from The Warm Up to Friday Night Lights to his debut commercial offering. Same delivery and for the most part is has been the same type of lyrical content. The counter point to this argument is that this album may be a lot of peoples first impression of J. Cole. So if I liked J. Cole when he first hit the rap nerd scene, won’t the general public maybe like Cole after their first impression of him? A point that could very well be a reality. However the general public are not rap nerds. Plus I haven’t seen a lot of new age rappity rap on the Billboard charts as of late. Which is exactly what J. Cole is doing…rapping.
The second problem is that J. Cole is a little bit of a creation of Jay-Z and his label Roc Nation. Let’s be 100% real. If some rapper drops a medicore project I ain’t blogging about. The difference? Jay-Z, the most relevant rapper in global pop culture, dapped this kid as next great rapper. And guess what? J. Cole did not deliver. While it might have be impossible for J. Cole to accomplish that regardless, the point is he didn’t even come close. I know there has been some talk about a star being born, but I am yet to be convinced of that.
