Just a Dollar and a Dreamville
"To look behind and say, "Look where I came, look how far I done came" they say that dreams come true, and when they do, that there's a beautiful thing". Those lyrics from Fayetteville’s very own are what comes to my mind when discussing the legacy of J Cole. It is no surprise to anybody that the Grammy award-winning artist has accumulated his fair share of accolades in his 14 year career of being a rapper. We have seen him in many forms of light and have come to cherish him deeply for what he can deliver on the grandest of stages, but we have also come to develop a sort of idea of who Jermaine Cole the person is.
For as long as I have come to understand him, J Cole is a relatively low key person. Unlike most rappers who are not shy to share their pieces of work or actions on various forms of social media, J Cole has been pretty much the opposite. We never know what he is cooking until he feels he is ready to show the world, whether it be with his music or personal life. Some people might say it’s a bad thing that he is not as much out there in the world as the rest of the industry, but his seven consecutive number 1 albums going platinum would tell those doubters otherwise.
It wasn’t until earlier this year when things seemed a bit different this time around. After releasing Revenge of the Dreamers III, he took a bit of a hiatus to focus on his personal life. We didn’t know what he was up to between much of 2019 and 2020 when the world was turned on its head due to covid. But once 2020 ended, you just had the sense that things were a little different. The world was healing from the clutches of one of the worst global pandemics in the modern era and wouldn’t you know it, J Cole was in the lab cooking up something for his fans.
The man shared cryptic posts on Instagram and Twitter and the world, thirsty for more J Cole, was in a frenzy. Normally he wouldn’t do something like this, it was out of character and for us Cole fans, otherworldly. Then came the teasing for months on end and eventually, he showed off the title of his next studio project, The Off-Season! Everyone in the rap world was in a frenzy, we were all craving for more music, but this was not like J Cole to be this open about his work! As much as we were in shock, we were all trying to figure out what was going on! He didn’t stop there, he released his song i n t e r l u d e. straight from the album and it was flames. What was an ember was about to turn into an inferno. And then the album was released, and the rest was history!
The Off-Season was critically acclaimed to the public and debuted at number one on the Rolling Stone Top 200 Albums chart selling 282,000 sales while also amassing over 325 million streams. With those numbers, he captured his seventh consecutive studio album to go number 1, the most out of any rapper to ever enter the rap game. He could have stopped there and watched all the bread rake in, but he was far from finished.
Shortly after his album launch, he took his talents to Africa, where he suited up for the Rwanda Patriots in the newly formed Basketball Africa League. As most fans may know, J Cole had a promising career ahead of him in basketball playing in high school and had Division-1 offers for multiple colleges, but instead chose to seek a career in rapping. I’m sure you could say he made the right choice here. But if there is anything you can take away from his short-lived stint on the hardcourt is that you can accomplish anything you dream about doing as long as you put your heart and soul into what you do. With his play. he was able to bring a large marketing presence to the league and bring awareness to everybody taking part in it: meaning more scouts to potentially bring in those players to the NBA. Say what you want about his time in the BAL, but you can’t belittle someone for living out their dream.
After his stint in the league, he returned to music where the fire just couldn’t be put out. He was hard at work putting out music videos for his songs a m a r i,
a p p l y i n g.p r e s s u r e, and p u n c h i n’.t h e.c l o c k. All of his songs have gathered millions of views thanks to their stylistic approach and interesting themes. On top of his music videos, he also released a mini-documentary on YouTube titled Applying Pressure: The Off-Season Documentary. There he goes through bits of what he has been up to and his inspirations and influences leading up to his release of The Off-Season. With no signs of stopping with the music videos and other forms of work, who knows what boundaries the man from the ville is gonna break in the coming weeks.
So, what does all this mean exactly? Well to put it into layman's terms, THE REAL IS BACK, THE VILLE IS BACK! You heard it, J Cole is riding a wave that shows no signs of stopping any time soon. When you look at his rather low-key past, it is no wonder why a lot of rap fans threw him under the radar, especially after he went after an industry that was dominated by young talent from 2017 through 2018. But with all of that in the past, J Cole is letting people know that he wants his damn respect as well. A rapper with 8 BET awards, 3 Soul Train Awards, 1 Grammy award, and 7 consecutive albums to go number 1 should not go unnoticed and the man from the Ville is letting everybody know all through 2021 onward. His evolution from his early days to now is highly evident in how he has approached his marketability and raw talent throughout most of this year. There is a reason why many fans in the rap world put him up there with the likes of Drake and Kendrick Lamar, he gives us something that most rappers in the industry can’t do, and that is soul and passion in what he says in his songs. J Cole will go down as one of this generation's greatest talents and he is not letting his accomplishments and future endeavors go overlooked any longer!