This is probably one of the last big releases of the year. Is it a Shaz clan favorite or possibly one of the biggest disappointments of the year?
This is probably one of the last big releases of the year. Is it a Shaz clan favorite or possibly one of the biggest disappointments of the year?
Honestly don’t understand the J Cole thing. It seems that some people no matter what he releases will think its the greatest thing ever made and then there’s the same with opposite side in that they will think its absolute trash no matter what. I always found myself to be in the middle, he’s not a bad rapper with bad beats behind him he’s just average. That being said I actually liked Forrest Hills Drive but his new album is not interesting enough to warrant repeated listens.
Not sure if it can really be called a disappointment given his track record but either way it’s no good.
I’m just giving you a hard time, shaz. Glad to see you’ve mellowed out some, I think you’ll get a better reaction like this.
ffs we have to deal with shaz on the forum now too?
so much discussion for the emptiest listening experience of the year
A better question: What can J. Cole do to make better music? What does he need to change to sell us on his work? Or is he stuck in this inevitable vortex of hate and praise leaving no room for a median.
Love the Fantastic Planet avi. And i’m not sure. I admire him trying to tackle serious themes in his music, rather than just talk purely about women, money and drugs. However, he handles these themes with such a lack of sensitivity and delicacy to me. Like he basically just addresses an issue that everyone is very aware of already, and doesn’t go into the issue beyond that. It’s almost like he has a checklist of things he feels he needs to bring up in order to be compared to Kendrick, so he checks off the political issues all the good rappers talk about so he can be talked about too. However, where the good rappers today have really fleshed out opinions on the matters, J Cole’s kind of just that kid that’s standing next to the popular kids so he looks cool. He doesn’t have really in-depth opinions on the popular rap topics of today, but still scratches the surface of these topics in his music so it looks like he does.
Snoozefest. I honestly don’t believe that there’s anything more to J. Cole’s music than its accessibility - it’s deep enough to stay out of today’s “ignorant rap” scene (written i quotation marks because people who call trap etc. ignorant are completely missing the point, but that’s a subject for an another day), but doesn’t actually offer any solid commentary on anything. J. Cole is easy to relate to, but that’s as far as he goes as an artist. The lyrics cover up for the blandness of the beats and the raps; everything Cole does is too safe, and therefore too boring. This album sounds like a cliché rap album and doesn’t break any new ground.
I didn’t care for this album at all. I’m guessing that Cole is trying to release an album that can be considered a “classic” or something ever since the 2014 Forest Hills Drive album, which for me is just a mediocre album that the J. Cole fans think is a masterpiece of modern hip-hop. Lyrically, I think that Cole isn’t really the most interesting rapper out there when it comes to a personal story. Sure, some people can relate to his stories, but I don’t relate to his stories personally.
Now, there are some rappers that bring up these personal stories quite well, and even though I can’t relate to these stories, these rappers will still deliver these stories quite well, because they make the story compelling, which is something that Cole does not do very well, in my opinion.
I was anticipating this album a little bit, and I thought that this album was pretty bland and uninteresting. I didn’t like the instrumentals all that much. They didn’t do any justice, and they made what Cole was saying even less interesting, in a way. And the lyrics are even less interesting. Overall, I think that Cole’s fans hype his projects a bit too much, to say the least.