J. Cole

To me, now that I've heard some early mixtapes and every solo studio album once, J. Cole is elite and indistinct. Masterful, passionate, consistent beyond compare, yet somehow blending into the background. Obviously this connects to the fact that I literally didn't notice him for so many years. Was that my fault, his, or pure circumstance? Maybe it's on him that he didn't force universal awareness a la Taylor Swift, but that's hardly a bar he needs to meet. Barring that, it's not his fault I didn't catch on to him, as I never tried a single song. I think there's some pure circumstance here; had I been surrounded by Cole advocates in high school, I might have zealously adopted. Bon Iver is an insightful case: he never forced universal awareness, and I don't blame him for it; he also isn't a top-tier artist, yet I love him, because I was around him (literally) in high school and carried him all these years. It's an extreme example -- the bias actually runs too strong -- but Cole is extreme in the other direction -- unusually low favor-bias.

I'm not hearing him at my most sympathetic time. I'm not sure where I'm at with rap these days. Within a standard deviation, rap may have the highest floor of any genre for me, yet the ceiling out to a couple of standard deviations is low. In other words, most rap is decent to me, little is standout. Cole himself is standout, for quality and consistency, but the music doesn't spark much for me.

My taste in rap has changed a little too. I used to love sad rap -- humble, conscious, sentimental. Cole's introspection and Ville love would have hit me just right in middle and high school, maybe even college. Now I'd rather hear a wicked beat from him, polyrhythm, creativity in the theory rather than authenticity in the purpose. I probably still like soft rap, but Cole's early albums are a bygone style, still good but no longer inventive. I guess I need invention, and Cole is disadvantaged by my hearing him so many years too late. He has such a hill to climb to sound inventive so many years later. His later albums sound more inventive, although even those aren't standing out to me like the best rap used to. Will any rap? I still pay a lot of attention to Kendrick, but is he really standing out to me or do I just care because it's Kendrick? Again, I'm not drifting away from rap -- it's such a high floor -- but maybe even the best of it will have a hard time striking me going forward. I don't think I've been amazed by any rap since Kendrick in college, nor distinctly pleased by much since Coloring Book and Flower Boy shortly thereafter (I'm excluding Kendrick there since at this point he's just my guy and I'm generally pleased anytime he does something).

In summary, Cole is so impressive, yet strikes me as unoriginal, partly because I'm too late for him, partly because rap has such a hard time amazing me now, and perhaps partly because he's just a quintessential rapper in good and bad ways. Good because his product is just so solid and captures the spirit of hip hop. Bad because his blending of everyone else's qualities causes him to blend in. Maybe that last bit wasn't true at the time of each album's drop, but it feels true now, in this retrospective.