There are few musicians who face the same sort critical adoration and fan enthusiasm/ high album sales divide as J.Cole. For those who find this to be a bit hyperbolic, each of his previous 3 studio efforts have made it top number one on the Billboard 200. Born Sinner’s first week sales equalled Yeezus. But, there’s few publications that have gone out of their way to show any level of critical appreciation to his studio efforts.
Granted, since his surprise release two years ago however, the music world has seen all of two songs from the artist. Hidden in seclusion, it was on December 2 that a sudden documentary, titled Eyes was released exclusively on Tidal, and along with it two and songs and an announcement. There would be a new J.Cole album the following week. Thus, on December 9, I found myself with a copy of 4 Your Eyez Only in Target buying my first physical copy of CD since J.Cole’s last release. before I get further into the album review, I’d like to dismiss most if not all the early reviews of the album which primarily read like one-listen write-ups, a process to which this album is not friendly. Then in the other corner you have sub-par mediocre writers who slander J. Cole’s artistic merits while simultaneously writing nothing of worldly relevance themselves (looking at you Shea Serrano.)
Throughout his career, J.Cole has had trouble reconciling his own ambitions for stardom with a personal calling for storytelling as an art form. As an introspective rapper he’s chronicled that struggle and journey, beginning with his early career mixtapes The Warm Up as well as the massively underrated Friday Night Lights. But following a lukewarm freshman studio release, we saw the beginning of J. Cole’s transition back to his roots of music. As a personal fan of Born Sinner, I loved what the work was, and it showed an evolving sense of comfort. Then, it was finally with Forest Hills Drive that J. Cole the artist and superstar finally found a convergence. Stadium bass heavy anthems like G.O.M.D and Firing Squad were there to balance the softening back-end of the album, which featured a more melodic and piano heavy movement.
Now, with the release of 4 Your Eyez Only, J. Cole has come full circle, though maybe not in the way that many had expected.
In 4 Your Eyez Only, Cole channels the spirit and movement he found in “Be Free” and abandons any sort of the commercial aspirations or catchy hooks that comprised his previous album. This artist in his own words wants to be a “vessel for the truth” which takes the form of reflecting of offering a poetics take on the black struggle in America. The cyclical nature of the mindset created by our society, by systems of greed and capitalism that create these self-fulfilling prophecies. There is a reason the title track of the song is For Whom the Bell Tolls. Though known more widely from the Hemingway title, the original phrase actually comes from the metaphysical poet John Donne, who wrote a series of meditations and prayers on health, pain, and sickness (sound familiar?). Taken from his 1624 work, aptly titled Devotions upon Emergent Occasions,taken from the epigraph is this piece,
“No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friendsor of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”
For someone who prides himself a storyteller, the newest album by J. Cole is an attempt to do jut that. Now that his backstory is well known, the question would always be what content would make up his new album. And what we were served were a world difference from the pre-album releases “False Prophets” and “Everybody Dies.” A fan theory has spread across the internet that the perspective of the album isn’t actually through J. Cole’s eyes but that through a young slain man known as James McMaillian. The narrative of his friend James is strung along with J. Cole’s own narrative, and why he hopes to be there for his wife and daughter. In the midst of Ville Mentality we get a glimpse of an unnamed young girl who muses during the interlude on she wishes her dad were there when he gets upset at his mom.
The stand-out songs on this album come in a different form. The song Deja Vu, which sounds very much like a remix of Bryson Tiller’s hit song, Exchange, finds our protagonist in the same introspective mood about a girl he has a crush on as was the case with a young J. Cole on his first mixtape with the song Dreams. The stand-out track of the album is likely going to be “Neighbors” a bass heavy reminiscence by J.Cole on wanting find some privacy away from fame as well as on how his white neighbors think he’s selling drugs to be able to afford his lavish home. It’s one of the few songs with a knowing allusion to J.Cole’s wealth and only comes in the form of realizing quickly that even though he may share the same economic status as his neighbors, they still look on him as a stranger, or worse, a criminal.
Other songs find Cole musing on the affect of life and death on songs such as Change, or like the song Immortal, flips the script by offering a head bumping chorus.. All together we have a collection of musing of songs on controversial and too real topics such as incarceration, police brutality, toxic masculinity and other miseries that plague black communities.
There’s no bling or commercial music here..
It’s likely that to many fans and to the general consumer, the lack of commercial sound is what is likely to be the reason for any fan disappointment or half-assed critics lamenting on why their subjective opinion should be considered objectively. When in reality, with 4 Your Eyez Only, J.Cole has created his strongest and most cohesive album to date, simply by doing away with the some of his rhyming gimmicks as well as the sort of dumbed down commercial music he so loathes to make. The album finds itself inhabiting the space where J.Cole’s lyricism shine the most, particularly in taking the listener, by nature of his introspective lyrics, on a trip through his own eyes. The nature of his music is supposed to be to create a personal connection. And it’s a skill-set that has worked again and again.
This isn’t album meant to appeal to the Hypebeast who’s willing to drop hundreds of dollars at every Kanye concert they can get to or try and grab a pair of Yeezy’s while they bump Drake. That’s not an insult to anyone, but this is grown man music. So, despite the brutality of its topics, there are moments where Cole finds hope in love, which will predictably be a place of criticism. We find in She’s Mine Pt. 1, J. Cole melodizing about being truly in love with a woman, and then She’s Mine Pt. 2 finds J. Cole reflecting on what it’s like to be an impending father. Though quite unexpected on the relatively short album, both songs have gorgeous arrangements and a sincerity to it that makes both truly romantic odes to love and fatherhood. Another outing without featured performers, 4 Your Eyez Only, and executive produced by Cole’s long-term producer and friend, Elite, it’s a high quality music experience that’s beautifully and uniquely composed. Including live instruments and a strong jazz influence, the added production and chords make it his most sonically satisfying to date.
It seems J. Cole has found a new map for himself sonically, and with the rhymes as sharp as ever, and losing any burdens of hoes and money, we find an artist who has finally matured, and if this is the first glimpse of what we’ll be getting from J. Cole in the future, it’s nothing but a good sign. For with Cole finally finding his voice, and focusing a full album on topics he feels truly strong about, we no longer find the contradictions of wanting fame but wanting to be a story. What he has here is a full zoned in Cole on what matters most to him, after finding what he so desperately wanted, mental peace.