<\/a>Octavis Lawson
\n<\/strong>Staff Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHands in the air now, Hands in the Air!\u201d because the Roc Nation poster child has made his return to rap in a way only he could.<\/p>\n

By taking a page out of Kanye\u2019s and Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s playbooks, J. Cole released \u201c2014 Forest Hill Drive\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

As \u201c2014 Forest Hill Drive\u201d starts, listeners are privy to an unparalleled amount of authenticity from an artist who has never shown you anything less. In a genre where \u201cbeing real\u201d is everything, Cole decides to put his entire life experiences from an adolescent to an adult on a LP the way only he could.<\/p>\n

\u201cWet Dreamz\u201d, and \u201c\u201903 Adolescence\u201d 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, \u201cDo you think that you would know what to do if you was me? I got, four brothers, one mother that don\u2019t love us, if they ain\u2019t want us why they never wore rubbers?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dreamville CEO even finds time to flex his lyrical abilities and even strike up a little controversy with songs like \u201cFire Squad\u201d and \u201cJanuary 28th\u201d. The latter holds lyrical gems such as \u201cshow me New York\u2019s ladder, I climb it and set the bar so high that you gotta get Obama to force the air force to find it\u201d and with \u201cFire Squad\u201d Cole goes on an lyrical onslaught not unlike anything ever heard from him.<\/p>\n

Nearly each line of the aforementioned song is quotable from bars such as \u201cso ahead of my time, even when I rhyme about the future I be reminiscing\u201d and his calling out of Caucasian hip-hop artists Eminem, Iggy Azalea and Macklemore.<\/p>\n

By the end of the album, Cole goes full circle with his story telling as he goes back into the tales of \u201cNo Role Models\u201d and the album\u2019s lead single \u201cApparently\u201d. 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 \u201cI\u2019m hot, dog, catch up to me n***a, Uh, couldn\u2019t resist\u201d make this and \u201cG.O.M.D.\u201d the two most obvious commercial tracks and therefore singles for \u201c2014 Forest Hills Drive\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t recommend this album for the casual hip-hop listener, I would recommend his sophomore effort \u201cBorn Sinner\u201d as a better introduction into Cole\u2019s World.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Octavis Lawson Staff Writer \u201cHands in the air now, Hands in the Air!\u201d because the Roc Nation poster child has made his return to rap…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_plus_post_options":"{}","editor_plus_copied_stylings":"{}","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}