J. Cole’s Victory Lap

By Andre Gee

New York didn’t create J. Cole, but it made him a household name. The Fayetteville native moved to Queens in 2003 and enrolled in St. John’s specifically to be around the music industry. The first glimpse of him on camera was as an unassuming spectator at Dave Chappelle’s Block Party in 2004. It was at Midtown’s Roc the Mic Studios in 2007 that he waited two hours to hand Jay-Z a beat CD and was told, “Man, I don’t want that,” by the rap icon upon his arrival. A year later, Jay-Z sought him out after industry vet Mark Pitts played him “Lights Please,” leading Cole to sign with Roc Nation and springboard into the stardom he left home for. 

It’s the rap version of AI and Georgetown, or KD and the University of Texas. New York’s not home, but for Cole, it was the buffer between home and national stardom; it’s an emblem of the era in which one drops the safety net, becomes an adult, and pushes through obstacles and discomfort in pursuit of a goal. That rearing gives Cole’s upcoming five-night stand in the Apple more gravitas than the average tour stop. He’s hitting the city twice before he heads out to Long Island for a night. But he’s starting his run with two dates at Barclays Center.

On a nightly basis, Cole’s one-upping Drake’s It’s All a Blur-era mid-crowd walkout by starting his set from a random spot in the audience; I was told he briefly talks to the attendees holding those seats before he borrows them. Elsewhere in his set, he gives a fan up in the stands the spotlight while they rap every word of a song. Others get to jump onstage and be his hypeperson. These moments feel like an extension of his career-long effort to go a little further for his fans, like attending one’s college graduation after contributing to her tuition. 

He’s in the midst of a victory lap after The Fall-Off, which he’s said would be his last album as J. Cole (whatever that portends), and he’s allowing the fans to share in the moment to an extra degree. It’s fair. It is him and them against the world, after all.

I know somebody reading this is ready to push back: “B-b-but hip-hop just needs that next DMX figure to cut through!”—it’s not going to happen.

Cole resides at an interesting place on the rap map. He and his Big 3 comrades, Kendrick Lamar and Drake, are hip-hop’s last superstars. I know somebody reading this is ready to push back: “B-b-but hip-hop just needs that next DMX figure to cut through!”—it’s not going to happen. No one can replicate what Cole’s created for himself, because the path he took has been subsumed by streaming and its endless algorithms. No new household names have reached the sky, because the MTV/BET, Black radio, and Black music imprint messenger planes have been grounded. 

While Cole is one of the last dons, he, more than Drake or Kendrick, has always felt like an early glimpse of what music would become, with artists fostering cult fan bases on their own terms, in their own corners of the music world. Whereas Drake and Kendrick’s fan bases feel pretty diverse, Cole’s locked in with a very specific kind of fan—one whose attributes mirror those of his catalog: traditionalist but not too left of center, obsessed with their inner narrative, and probably a little pretentious (hopefully endearingly so). They’re the kinds of fans who fixate on what hip-hop is or isn’t, using Cole’s sound as the sole criterion. They aren’t as malicious as the B*rbz; if those fans are beating you over the head for questioning the Queen’s dominance, Cole’s supporters excuse you for simply not having that certain level of intelligence needed to understand his music.

Cole’s fans’ loyalty will allow him to operate in a half-retired netherworld he’s been telegraphing since late 2020, when he uploaded a map of the Fall-Off era: features, Return of the Dreamers 5, The Off-Season, It’s a Boy (the lone unreleased project), and, finally, The Fall-Off, released in February. We’d never seen an artist of his stature call the last shots of his career like this. It would be like LeBron announcing in 2022 that the Lakers had three more years before he probably headed to Philly.

Once Cole outlined his story’s denouement, everything that came after was evaluated in relation to the impending ‘Fall-Off.’ 

Once Cole outlined his story’s denouement, everything that came after was evaluated in relation to the impending Fall-Off. The Off-Season was the rap world’s first (major) penultimate album. Might Delete Later was his first non-Roc Nation project in years, and the crest of his “I’ll outrap anyone” era. Ironically, the project was marked by him retracting “7 Minute Drill,” a Kendrick diss that sounded as halfhearted as he later admitted it was. Despite what bloodthirsty rap fans say, there’s no good reason to halfway diss somebody; if you’re wary of using fighting words, you shouldn’t take it there. 

Even when he bowed out of the Drake and Kendrick beef, the fans who didn’t disown Cole clamored to hear his thoughts on The Fall-Off. Cole has said the backlash period inspired him to rework parts of the album. During a post-Fall-Off Reddit AMA, he said he has “no interest” in more J. Cole albums, though “I will write, I will record when it hits me.” He plans to release new music, but with no intention to “top” The Fall-Off. 

What does that mean, exactly? How excited should fans be about a hypothetical project that Cole’s already tempering expectations for? If it were any other fan base, that kind of reveal could be counterproductive. Anything he does drop, though, his stans have already labeled album of the year.

Elsewhere in the AMA, he shared that his passion now lies behind the boards: “I wanna make beats, produce for other artists, even if i’m not making the beat. Just helping to craft the vision. that’s a big passion of mine that I haven’t been able to lock in on cuz for years my focus was on ME and my story. I think my gift is maybe even greater when I’m in a more selfless role.” His recent production on Fayetteville rapper PFG’s Never Say Die is the start of that journey. 

Rappers have always had a noncommittal relationship with retirement. We’ve frequently seen artists tweak out on their label and angrily claim they’re retiring on social media, only to delete their diatribes and head back to the studio. Veeze once told me he wants to leave rap after his seventh album specifically. We’ll see if it happens. Drake was candid with Lil Yachty about envisioning a “graceful exit” from the rap game, quelling fears that he was on his own Fall-Off arc. Since then, he’s dropped four projects, including three in one night. 

Joe Budden is one of the few MC who have truly peaced out from rap. He’s been open about how the industry’s exploitation wore on his creative impulses. But last year, he told his podcast buddies that “I want to rap. I do, I ain’t gon’ lie.” As pretentious as it sounds, a real-deal artist will never be fully divorced from their creativity. 

Cole was right to hedge on his next chapter, because he’s as much of a rap fanatic as Budden. During his last album cycle, he recounted a story about taking a break after 2014 Forest Hills Drive made him a star and realizing he wasn’t ready to around and watch TV. Will he have that epiphany again? Is a post-Fall-Off era an eventuality? Those questions linger. But for now, he’s celebrating what may be his final album on tour.