Octavis Lawson
Staff Writer
“Hands in the air now, Hands in the Air!” because the Roc Nation poster child has made his return to rap in a way only he could.
By taking a page out of Kanye’s and Beyoncé’s playbooks, J. Cole released “2014 Forest Hill Drive” with little to no promotion. This seems to have worked out in his favor as he has seemingly rescued hip-hop in 2014 as the plethora of rap albums released throughout the year saw a rapid decline of album sales in the genre.
As “2014 Forest Hill Drive” starts, listeners are privy to an unparalleled amount of authenticity from an artist who has never shown you anything less. In a genre where “being real” is everything, Cole decides to put his entire life experiences from an adolescent to an adult on a LP the way only he could.
“Wet Dreamz”, and “’03 Adolescence” start this story of a young man from North Carolina, as he puts his story telling skills to good use by letting us in on his first sexual encounter and telling us the story of his best childhood friend by saying, “Do you think that you would know what to do if you was me? I got, four brothers, one mother that don’t love us, if they ain’t want us why they never wore rubbers?”
The Dreamville CEO even finds time to flex his lyrical abilities and even strike up a little controversy with songs like “Fire Squad” and “January 28th”. The latter holds lyrical gems such as “show me New York’s ladder, I climb it and set the bar so high that you gotta get Obama to force the air force to find it” and with “Fire Squad” Cole goes on an lyrical onslaught not unlike anything ever heard from him.
Nearly each line of the aforementioned song is quotable from bars such as “so ahead of my time, even when I rhyme about the future I be reminiscing” and his calling out of Caucasian hip-hop artists Eminem, Iggy Azalea and Macklemore.
By the end of the album, Cole goes full circle with his story telling as he goes back into the tales of “No Role Models” and the album’s lead single “Apparently”. The single tells the story of Cole leaving home to go to college at NYU and follow his dreams in the Big Apple. With lines like “I’m hot, dog, catch up to me n***a, Uh, couldn’t resist” make this and “G.O.M.D.” the two most obvious commercial tracks and therefore singles for “2014 Forest Hills Drive”.
In a nutshell, this album is a great third album for current J. Cole fans as he gets the most personal he has ever been. Although I wouldn’t recommend this album for the casual hip-hop listener, I would recommend his sophomore effort “Born Sinner” as a better introduction into Cole’s World.
Be First to Comment