J. Cole and the Limitations of Millennial Rap by Kevin Rodriguez

This past week J. Cole, an artist who gaining attention for his increasingly fluid lyricism and his growing knack for working samples, blew up through sheer persistence. He dropped a new project almost every year between 2007 and 2015 and stayed on the road, touring The Warm Up, Friday Night Lights, Cole World: The Sideline Story, Truly Yours, Born Sinner, Revenge of the Dreamers, and 2014 Forest Hills Drive with the likes of Jay-Z, Rihanna, Wale, Big K.R.I.T., Drake, and Eminem. He built and nurtured a base while working out the kinks in his sound. This past week he has released his album titled, The Off Season. only 3 years ago he released his album KOD. he three-year stretch between KOD and this spring’s The Off-Season marks the longest break between albums in J. Cole’s career thus far, appearances on Dreamville Records’ impressive 2019 Revenge of the Dreamers III comp and singles like 21 Savage’s “A Lot” and Young Thug’s “London” notwithstanding. A husband and father of two, at 36, he’s learning when to rush and when to throttle, balancing a never-ending quest to make better music with a desire to kick back and enjoy prosperity. Five albums deep, it’s hard to surprise people. Cole, a student of hip-hop history as much as he seeks to be a pivotal figure in it, is milking this moment, heralding his next big move with a protracted rollout full of teasers and warmup projects. As the title suggests, The Off-Season is sort of a training montage, a blade-sharpening exercise not unlike Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late in its core objective of showing the work it takes to stay on top while cultivating buzz for a future release (in this case, Cole’s forthcoming The Fall Off) — and maybe notching a few more hit records along the way. The Off-Season marks the return of mixtape Cole, from its cover — which revisits the basketball theme of 2007’s The Come Up and 2009’s The Warm Up — to the songs, where the structures and themes of the early tapes will present as familiar to longtime listeners. Most songs amount to one long verse where Cole expounds on the state of his life and the world beyond it, sometimes offset by a vocalist or a guest rapper, breaking a five-year streak of featureless releases. The Off-Season revisits the headspace and haunts of Cole’s early career, and in the parallels between the music he made then and now, you begin to see how much his life and circumstances have changed since his career exploded. It’s a nostalgia trip, both figuratively and literally. The Off-Season isn’t quite as potent as KOD, admittedly due to the rust accumulated since then, but in its focus on the Sisyphean climb, the yearning for greatness we might never attain, it is always relatable, frequently motivational, and sometimes quite impressive. Bouncing verses off of guests again seems to reinvigorate Cole. The guys who get verses are kindred spirits of a sort. Lil Baby and 21 Savage, street rappers with technical savvy and a sense for the sociopolitical movements that make life how it is, keep Cole on his toes on “Pride Is the Devil” and “My Life.” Baby’s quick, melodic flow shows where Cole’s dabbling in the same style needs improvement, and Savage’s ease balancing smirking, believable threats of terror and heartbreaking stories about loss take these songs places Cole wouldn’t. He should invite his friends over more often; they bring different colors to his music. J. Cole’s catalogue is a very millennial experiment in bridging styles, regions, and generations, and while he’s done a solid and ever-improving job of it, he doesn’t have to attempt, and be good at, everything. He knows that, but he’ll never stop trying. It’s admirable to the extent that it pays off. When it doesn’t, it invites the question of how much Cole has changed since his come up.