Scoffing at nice rides and referring to retaliatory violence as ignorance and poison may seem like well-earned wisdom, but it’s really a failure of empathy. And it can be that way because Cole’s got four albums and multiple world tours under his belt. 2,” which radiate love and are some of Cole’s most endearing odes to romantic love, partnership, and parenthood. These values shine on songs like “Foldin Clothes” and “She’s Mine Pt.
Cole’s world is a land of humility, domestic work, family, and good, educated decisions. Lines like these don’t sink the ship, but they do mark the margins of Cole’s everyman trappings. “Neighbors” is ostensibly about Cole’s inability to escape racism no matter where he lives, but between the restless nights and unsolicited cop visits, Cole squeezes in an odd humblebrag: “In the driveway there’s no rapper cars/Just some shit to get from back and forth.” Elsewhere, on “Change,” a song that’s allegedly about evolving, he conservatively raps, “Bloodshed done turned to the city to a battlefield/I call it poison, you call it real.” Likewise, “Change” also features this chin-grabber: “I believe if God is real he'd never judge a man/Because he knows us all and therefore he would understand/The ignorance that make a nigga take his brother life.” Cole’s good intentions aside, this a way of talking about crime among blacks that's more interested in blaming than understanding. Despite leaving off “False Prophets” and “Everybody Dies,” buzz-building tracks that embody the “king-of-rap” ethos that Cole disavowed on “Fire Squad,” a pestering condescension lurks. The album only falters when Cole’s empathy reveals its limits. Cole’s empathy has never been more expansive. 2.” The verse is spookily intimate, equal parts eulogy and final confession. The title track is a full-on habitation: Cole raps from the viewpoint of a slain friend for 5 solid minutes, addressing the friend’s daughter, who is possibly first introduced on “She’s Mine Pt. 2014 Forest Hills Drive featured some of the same core instruments, but here they’re less distinct, dispersing into a melancholic fog. As indicated by the promotional documentary Eyez, Cole is never alone, always backed by some shape-shifting coo, meandering synth, or crying baby. The compositions are just as inclusive, featuring lush strings, sputtering trumpet, and dreamy chords sourced from a legion of session musicians. Individual pain and grief quickly become collective, the “I” always suggesting a “we.” Cole doesn’t attempt to duplicate the quasi-telepathic, leap-frogging storytelling technique of Kendrick Lamar, but this blurred meta-consciousness has a similar effect. On “Ville Mentality” he receives thirsty texts, while on “She’s Mine Pt. On “Immortal” Cole serves fiends, witnesses murders, and mans the corner. But the viewpoints are rarely stable, the narrator always shifting. Cole privileges the stories of family, friends, and strangers, lingering on the ubiquity of death in black lives, the new normal. Cole,” as Dreamville producer Elite puts it. On this album, he’s mostly rapping “from a perspective that is not J. Scoffing at nice rides and referring to retaliatory violence as ignorance and poison may seem like well-earned wisdom, but it’s really a failure of empathy.Ĥ Your Eyez Only is a firm commitment to a larger cause. “I can feel my grip loosening, quick, do something before you lose it for good,” he scolds himself on “Love Yourz,” suddenly less concerned with his own struggles. “Be Free,” which Cole first performed live on the Late Show With David Letterman, didn’t make it onto 2014 Forest Hills Drive, but the doubts and anxieties described in the lyrics informed Cole’s state of mind that year. “When I look at you, I know you go through the same shit I do,” he told a man in a crowd. While there, actively dodging the press, he moved among the masses, trying to be the everyman his success is founded upon. You can feel his priorities change, his mission pivoting from being an everyman to being a mouthpiece for political protest.Ĭole recorded the quavering “Be Free” within a week of Brown’s death, but wanting to be more involved, days after its release, he flew to Ferguson. Tropez,” alluding to the tragedy and unrest in Ferguson, Missouri after the killing of Michael Brown.
“Lately, it’s been hard for me to smile,” Cole confesses on “St.
As the album progresses, instead of focusing on ending idolship, it shifts into an uneasy space where Cole wonders aloud about how he can be a more active participant in social movements. That moment feels like a statement of purpose, but it arrives at the album’s midpoint, rather than at the end. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences.