My Jermaine Cole Story

The first real time I understood who J. Cole was, it was on PBS.

My mom was watching a show on YouTube where a rapper got interviewed and knowing my interest in music, she asked me to check it out. To my surprise, it was J. Cole. Up to that point in March of 2015, the only thing I listened to in the car was pop rap on 99.7 or random singles from my friends. I had listened to some Eminem and some Kendrick, but I never followed the genre closely.

So, when I learned that a rapper grew up in a regular middle-class household going to school in a white community, then went to go to college and was a nerd, I was glad I discovered him. Something about his aura, the self-confidence he had, something made me feel like he was someone that could one day go on to become the first hip-hop politician if he wanted.

The album he was promoting on the show was 2014 Forest Hills Drive. I had never heard of it at the time, even though my first adventures on Twitter at the time. Yet, I just listened to the previews on iTunes as any kid before the age of streaming and decided to just buy it. Initially, I just left it to sit in my collection for a while and dabbled into it. It was good, but after a few listens, I was not intrigued.

But somewhere along that spring of 2015 and summer, I just listened to it from start to finish. And when I finished “Note…