The Off Season Is J. Cole At His Best

Yup, your read that right. J. Cole's The Off Season is by far J. Cole's best executed album, emphasis on his execution! Let's put J. Cole into context real quick.

J. Cole is part of the last decade's triad of goated rappers who reigned over the 2010s. Out of the decade's big three, J. Cole is the oldest and the one that has been in the game for the longest. Dating all the way back to 2007, J. Cole's the Come Up was his debut underground mixtape with his iconic track "Simba", the first rendition of his "Dollar and A Dream" saga, as well as his remix of "Dead Presidents", and many more tracks that sent a shockwave throughout the rising internet mixtape platforms. However, it would be his second mixtape The Warm Up that would garner industry attention and is still hailed as, either his best work, or one of his best work. After The Warm Up, J. Cole was signed to Roc Nation and lead the way to his paramount mixtape "Friday Night Lights" next year in 2010.

Friday Night Lights was the first project I waited on as a J. Cole fan. Being an avid 106 & Park watcher at the turn of the decade, I became a fan of Cole when he appeared on the "Next Up" segment, and of course the music videos for "Simba" and "Who Dat" are what truly got me hooked. When Friday Nights Light dropped it was like a shockwave, especially after the industry's lukewarm response to Drake's debut album "Thank Me Later", it really seemed like J. Cole was going to hold the #1 spot for the upcoming year. So many of us became a fan when Friday Night Lights dropped, I don't think I need to cover it more than I have, but to me the appeal in Cole was his hunger, his raw energy mixed with his deeper-than-the-surface lyrics helped me realize that we were witnessing the rise of a new star.

For the remainder of his career, I longed for the same drive and hunger he had in his first three mixtapes, but, personally, I never witnessed it again. Instead, Cole delivered several softer-tone, more pensive albums, and don't get me wrong, I do not believe that J. Cole has any bad albums, they are all great. However, put in contrast with his peers who found their voice and their lanes so quickly, J. Cole found himself walking down an unmarked path of self-discovery throughout the entire decade. In most of his albums so far, Cole tried to experiment sounds and flows on his own terms, he never tried to sound like anybody else but it was also quite clear the J. Cole was not sure what his sound was. His best commercial success 2014 Forrest Hill Drive is a project that begins with hard-hitting instrumentals, but all of a sudden quiets down and never alternates back out of this slow-paced melodic rhythm, which, again, is not bad, but it is not spectacular nor trend-setting. And so, Cole went through a whole decade making great music, but never ground-breaking music, and on its own that's a great feat, but Cole being put on the pedestal of the greats meant that people were going to scrutinize his worth as a goat-emcee.

Being given the mantel of "conscious rapper" or "lyrical rapper", most of the generation's push-back against older styles of Hip Hop was directed at J. Cole, and I do not stan him enough to act like J. Cole does not have any flaws as a rapper or as a person, but I hold that much of the criticism he received was not warranted. Nevertheless, with his most recent album "K.O.D." coming at the end of the decade, it seemed like Drake and Kendrick were easily accepted as some of the most ground-breaking rappers of all time, while Cole, well the rap community never reached a minimal form of consensus as to what his goat status was; he's one of this generation's greatest rappers, but was he really that great of a lyricist/rapper/artist?

My answer is YES, without a DOUBT, and The Off Season, to me, as a fan is a declaration of his greatness. More than anything, this is Mixtape Cole, he came on this album with something to prove to himself and to the rest of the world. Every single one of his albums debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts, his record sales are some of the best in the entirety of American music, he has his own record label and I would be surprised if his last world-tours were not all sold-out in a matter of hours. J. Cole already proved to the world that he was a great businessman and a successful artist, but in The Off Season we saw J. Cole strip himself from all the accolades, and instead went down an introspective slope where he questioned the prospect of retirement, his penskills, and a general inquiry into what it means to make good music.

From start to finish, the instrumentals have your head knocking, each song is a headbop accompanied by frank lyrics. Surprisingly too, the features sprinkled around the album add an element of variety rarely seen in a Cole record. The production follows a new-age boom bap style, trap drum-bass sequencing over beautiful samples; it's a melting pot of what make J. Cole old-school yet still new and refreshing. Moreover, the album is not a concept album but a theme-album with a feeling of redemption threaded into every song. With Cole's honest lyrics about mental fortitude, imposter syndrome and honest conversations about money, it seems we've come to meet a J. Cole that appreciates his past career and achievements, but also a Cole that's able to understand that he has not yet left his mark like he knows he can; emphasis on the yet.

The Off Season is meant to be an intermission album between to several other albums that will lead to his retirement record "The Fall Off", which should come in the following years. Already 12-13 years into the game, giving him another 3-5 years would make him a real veteran. If he truly wants to retire on a good note, then, like he says in this album's final song "hunger on hillside", he will have to be confident in his skills, in his craft, and in his untapped potential. The reflective song finds Cole giving himself props for being one of the illest in the game still, but reminding himself that if he "quits now, he's dead wrong", an affirmation that regular people can use in troubling times, but definitely a reminder that there's much more Cole can do to leave a mark on the game.

I think J. Cole is a goat emcee, experiencing his growth for the past decade has been a gift and I'm sure people felt the same with Nas and biggie in '94. The Off Season is Cole at his best, it is him in his element and in confidence, a confidence we haven't seen since Friday Nights Light. If The Off Season is truly the epilogue to what's to come, then perhaps it won't be remembered as a classic because it will be outshined by what follows next. I truly hope it does, but if this happens to be Cole's last best album, I believe it'll be remembered as one of this generation's best albums, and perhaps the project that everyone will reference to in the conversation of whether J. Cole is one of the greatest of all time! But only time will tell, for now we're in The Off Season, let's see what the season, the playoffs and the championship will bring.