Still, ceding an entire hour to a rapper who works best in short bursts works better here than anyone could’ve expected. “No Role Modelz” parlays a suspicion about a hookup being a golddigger into a tirade about black women lacking respectable public figures, crudely suggesting that “she’s shallow but the pussy deep.” (For all the talk of Cole’s enlightenment he’s a perfect brute when it comes to women, and “No Role Modelz” is something of a tacit admission.) 2014 Forest Hills Drive often plays at a depth it never delivers. It’s relatable but hardly the kind of story you want to hear more than once. “Wet Dreamz” recounts his first time having sex in lurid detail, from lying to a girl about his prowess to looking at porn for pointers to finding out the girl’s been lying, too.
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The laughable wordplay fails of mixtapes albums past (“My money like a senior, watch it graduate,” “Cole heating up like that leftover lasagna”) are thankfully absent, but Cole isn’t yet sharp enough of a storyteller to carry a full album on his own.
Bold move, and where it floats, it soars, but it flops gloriously when it doesn’t. It’s a block of Cole raps and Cole hooks served mostly over Cole beats. In its quest to canonize Cole, 2014 Forest Hills Drive eschews both singles and guests. He works well with guests his collaborations with Drake, Missy Elliott, and TLC are highlights in his growing body of work, and he gets along so well with Kendrick Lamar that the duo is rumored to have clandestinely recorded an EP together. He’s great at synthesizing everyman relationship woes into terse pop nuggets. He makes passable albums with memorable singles. Cole is a workmanlike MC, a good-natured populist grappling with the ridiculousness of sudden celebrity. There may not be a track as emotionally raw as “Love Yourz,” but track-for-track, this is the most consistent project he’s put out.J. Just an A-list rap album with tight punchlines and precision verses-from a technical standpoint, there’s simply no argument that this is the sharpest and most focused he’s ever sounded to date-incorporating some of the best voices and minds around at the moment with nary a skip. No big concepts, no off-putting isolation this time around.
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(This week, Cole also announced out of nowhere that he will join the Basketball Africa League’s Rwanda Patriots to play three-to-six games.) That’s all well and good, but in the here and now, The Off-Season is a welcome reminder that Cole still knows how to play, and well. The title is a nod to the training and drills that go into adding to your game before the season.
Who can forget “Foldin Clothes,” wherein Cole basks in domestication as exemplified by drinking almond milk and, yes, folding laundry with his wife?There are career-high gems scattered across these projects, no doubt, but with a limited pool of producers outside of himself and nary a feature, there’s little pushing the music from feeling too familiar.Ĭole has described the theme of this album and the grand “ Fall Off era” it is but a part of as bucking complacency ( The Fall Off is an album he’s been working on for years and envisions as his last as an “active” competitor). Heady concepts ( 4 Your Eyez Only is written from the perspective of a slain friend to his daughter KOD grapples with addiction both experienced and in general) clashed with banal confessionals. 1 releases and sold-out arena tours without having to play the industry game, and the albums that followed indulged that luxury a little too heavily. The bars were sharper, beats harder (even the oft-ridiculed “Wet Dreamz” objectively knocks), and the radio hits were organic, with no frills, flashy features or trend-chasing sounds.įHD’s success secured Cole a fanbase large and loyal enough to propel him to No. Drake distilled his R&B tenderness, pop sensibilities and bro-rap bars into his most concise, assured effort to date on Nothing Was the Same.Īs for Cole, after five years of indulging in the superficial highs and inevitable lows of the music industry, he returned to his roots (the album title is his childhood home address) and made a dynamic project that loosely chronicled his life to that point. Jay-Z finally figured out how to master radio but stay street on Hard Knock Life. Kanye pushed himself to a self-described “stadium status” sound on Graduation. (Open it up to mixtapes, and Friday Night Lights is probably the clear winner.) The third album is often a pivotal point for mainstream rappers: the moment where they either lock themselves into a successful lane or declare themselves a generational talent who’s not just here to stay, but to transcend. Cole fans on his best album and the majority answer will be his third, 2014 Forest Hills Drive.
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