J. Cole: Album review may be deleted later

J Cole is clearly not the rapper he wants to be. Since beginning his career at the height of the blogging era, the North Carolina native has staked his reputation on being a peerless rapper, a paragon of the genre, and a master of experimentation. . Although a talented singer with a flexible voice, he was always (sometimes) reverential Damage) is a legend from the 1990s and early 2000s, writing about his life in long, mythical arcs and peppering his albums with radio singles grounded in the neuroses and character details seeded in his early mixtapes. It presents all of this in a way designed to make room for definite bursts of showmanship in the setting – a magnetic situation if you can hack it. Cole often can't.

Maybe deleted later, which was released as a “mixtape” without warning last week, exists only to underscore this competitive streak in Cole’s music. How else could we have a record that, instead of a single, took aim shakily at Kendrick Lamar, who had so lightly attacked Kool On Future and Metro Boomin.like this“Weeks ago? But last weekend, less than 48 hours after its release, Cole got on stage at his Dreamville festival in Raleigh and apologized to Kendrick for “7 Minute Drill” and its reused Jay-Z bars and squeaky metaphors. (“Fly Pebbles” “In your dome, we're the Stone Temple Pilots”; “He's still doing shows but he's down like the Simpsons”), calling it “the worst job I've ever done in my fucking life.” Maybe! What's for sure is that Maybe deleted later It lives up to its old title as a record that seems, for reasons of apology rather than his own, to negate itself in real time.

Both potential singles, the bass-featured “Fever” and the “Stealth Mode,” sound like half an abandoned record before it’s been brought back to its perfect form. (The former holds back and is still mostly effective, especially after it recovers from a clumsy opening line that momentarily recalls his famous room-cleaning line in Jeremih's poem.)Planes(“) Elsewhere, attempts at verbal pyrotechnics go haywire: by the middle of “Huntin' Wabbitz,” his flow has settled into a sleepy trapeze, and his boasts about being “so closed off” don't quite get the way they get it. “Re intended.

And still, Maybe deleted later It has a lot of compelling elements – rhythmic, compositional and even personal. Opener “Pricey” is burdened by an unnecessary decorative interlude and equally strained references to John Gotti and… Rick and Morty. But her drum sounds like it's dragging itself through quicksand, and Cole darts through it gracefully. In a later verse, in “Crocodile Tearz,” he clicks his teeth in a way that makes him seem almost calmer and more menacing than ever before; “HYB” is something extremely rare, a subtle incorporation of drill squiggle into a less industrial sound palette. On “Stickz N Stonez,” The Alchemist delivers the kind of irresistible hop that forces rappers to straighten up and find new pockets.