Hip-Hop Thread Genre • Page 582

J Cole is fine. The love for him is overblown, the hate for him is overblown

 

j cole does this thing where i could care less about him on solo stuff but his guest features are nice

 

cole is good

 

Wow. I find myself the minority vote haha.

 

I've seen people compare him to Kendrick Lamar like no

 

J. Cole is great. I'm still made about the Tekashi line, though.

 

J. Cole “Planez” verse

Never forget

 

J Cole writes nice poetry, set to un-interesting beats, with a pretty OK delivery

 

"I let you feel like you the shit, but boy you can't out-fart me" is a classic Cole line lol. I still laugh every time I remember it

 

J. Cole seems like a sincere dude and a good person and is doing a lot of legitimately positive things so I can't hate him but his solo material is boring as hell.

 

Yes to all of that

 

Their irl fanbases are probably 90% the same

 

I'm a big Cole fan

 

do you view him on the same level as like, Kendrick though? I have a cousin who just started college and he sees the two of them as like, the current kings of hip hop, and I have heard similar about Cole and the pedestal the younger crowd puts him on, I just don't get it.

And it's definitely interesting, Cole's last two album threads on this site only got to page 2 and 3, whereas Kendrick's is at page 41, so there is an obvious discrepancy on this website at least, but we aren't the young hip crowd all the time

 

I'll give my 23 year old perspective then lol

Obviously Kendrick is way better both as a lyricist and overall rapper, but that's not saying much because I think unless he goes massively downhill he's going to be remembered as one of the greats, period.

A big reason I like Cole is just that I love his personality, and he really doesn't beat around the bush with his lyrics, he gets super direct and personal in a way that you know exactly what he's trying to get across. I know that's probably a pretty divisive style because similes/metaphors are an important part of hip-hop but when I just want to hear a dude talk about his life and perspectives he's always a good one to turn on for me

I also generally fuck with his beats and hooks lol. He's also insanely good live

 

That's not surprising. A lot of people that don't really listen to the genre listen to Kendrick

 

That reminds me of the article, I am sure it's well known at this point, where the reporter goes into a Cole concert just not understanding his hype or anything, then at the end is like.... shit I get it, that show was incredible hah

 

My nephew, 21, also thinks Kendrick and Cole are like Nas and Jay Z basically

 

Yeah, I'd recommend seeing him live, or even watching his HBO concert film from the Forest Hills Drive tour. He played the album all the way through and told his story between every song and it almost felt like a one-man-show or something, I felt like I knew him by the end (although IIRC the HBO special cuts a lot of that stuff out)

I'd never call him like my favorite rapper or anything but I generally am a huge fan and actively look forward to when he does new shit. I've already seen him live 3 times

 

Look, I know he is a really good storyteller, and a lot of what I see is people relating and being into that. That's great, I think being a really positive role model who tells great stories is extremely important.

It's the stuff past that I don't quite get. His voice, flow, song structures aren't all that inventitive and the backing music is mostly OK to boring.

I guess to me, he is a really good poet and story who happens to put his poetry to music

 

Yeah I can understand that, on a purely technical level he's not the best rapper by any means, he tends to keep it pretty basic. Again I don't really mind though, his main appeal to me is his lyrics and like I said he's got some really catchy hooks

I do happen to really like his voice though lol

 

I like his voice. I don’t like Kendrick’s. I wish Cole would make “pop” songs again though.

 

To my high schoolers, Kendrick is already viewed as an OG and I honestly don’t think they listen to his music. He’s one of those “well yeah, he’s great” dudes that never gets brought up when kids talk about their favorites.

J Cole, on the other hand, still seems to be the most popular. Lot of love for Lil Durk and Polo G this year

 

I usually explain my lukewarm reaction to Cole like this: he’s doing everything right (except some of those super corny lines). He can rap, he talks about things people relate to, he produces listenable music and his own beats and on paper, he should be great. But he’s so damn average on every one of those things that nothing sets him apart. I’ve known about Cole for like a decade now and if a song with him on it came on idk if I could tell you it was him

 

Idk I don’t listen to him much but I can spot him on a track pretty easily