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Jermaine Cole has continued to impress and grow on me the more I’ve listened to him; to the point where I now consider him up there with some of my favourite rappers. Why? Cole simply spits from the heart, whilst effortlessly covering a huge range of relatable topics within his Discography. When it comes to Personal tracks, Home City tracks, Relationship tracks, or simply tracks where he’s just showing off his lyrical ability; Cole’s got it covered. Of course, then we’ve got his cleverly constructed Trilogies: ‘Dollar & a Dream’ and ‘Simba’.

Through these two particular 3-part specials, we get to relate to Jermaine’s road of rap as we see him progress as an artist from a Prince to the King he’s so eager to be. Despite his lyrical ability, Cole has also established himself as a top producer, clearly taking influence from Mr West whilst also integrating his own style, making his work incredibly individual and predominantly within his own control. His ambition can hardly be ignored either, and it’s this incredibly focused and driven mentality which has moulded Cole into a new role model for young aspiring persons all over the world who strive for their Dreams to come true.

Recently there has been plenty of hype surrounding teenage rappers; but until just last month, I had no idea that there was a track on the internet (obviously it’s already on Rap Genius) in which we get to hear a 15 year old J. Cole, despite being released under his old name, The Therapist. The track is called ‘The Storm’, and at a first listen the young, tender voice is obviously a different tone from the fresh sounding flow that Cole delivers today. But despite the lack of a voice-drop, Cole was still dropping some sick lyrics back then and it’s evident that from being a fully-fledged teen, Jermaine has had a passion and thirst for rapping about arguably one of men’s biggest complexities: beautiful women.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouqPDc1f_QM

An early example of J. describing the beauty and voluptuousness of a fine female is when he spits the lyrics:

“A true dime piece describing her, brown eyes
Caramel skin, thick thighs, goes beyond speech”

Clearly Cole is using his High-School English skills to create the vision of a caramel skinned beauty, whilst also recognising that this girl is so beautiful she ‘goes beyond speech’. Plainly, from a young age Cole is able to capture his listeners’ imagination by creating vivid images to which we can relate. Another favourite line from this rare track is when Cole says:

“Now the big question is when’s he gonna pop it?”

This is extremely clever wordplay for a young boy, playing on the classic ‘big question’ phrase which is typically associated with proposal. The Therapist turns the question on its head; so that the listener believes ‘the big question’ is actually, ‘when will he pop the big question?’

Cole also uses the (bracketed) lyrics at the end of certain lines so that he can include the female’s responses to his bars; integrating the implied listener into the song as if a conversation between male and female were occurring. This isn’t to say that J. Cole was the first rapper to incorporate this technique; there has been implied listeners integrated into poetry throughout history, but still, we are talking about a 15 year old boy at this point….

Now, I’ve read comments all over the internet in which people spurn and shun Cole for being too emotional and overly-sensitive. For me, Cole’s more personal, heartfelt tracks can be some of his most poignant and powerful. But what Cole manages to do so fluently, is incorporate deeper issues and human emotions into songs in which the topics wouldn’t typically include them. A perfect example of this would be one of Cole’s most popular and (in my opinion) best tracks: Lights Please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dyPeGDeS3o

With currently over 7,500,000 hits on YouTube, Lights Please has proved to be one of Cole’s most successful releases and is a firm fan favourite. But this isn’t to say that because this track was a mainstream success, Cole “sold out” the game like other rappers have done, opting for a more Pop-Rap route to the $$$. The track was first released on his Warm Up mixtape; the tape that famously caught the attention of the H.O.V. back in 2009. Once The Warm Up was in its final stages, Jay made J. his new Roc Nation label mate, and it can be stated that Lights Please may have had a deciding factor in Jiggas decision to sign up Jermaine. But I digress; Lights Please is a great Hip-Hop track, with a simple, yet extremely effective drum beat, a sporadic melody line and an unforgettable hook. What’s the subject content? Of course it’s about J. getting down to business with a girl; but delve a little deeper and the track also offers the listener an insightful sub textual message about life’s complexities.

Cole is a conscious rapper. He’s conscious of his lyrics, his flow, his beats, his other tracks and most importantly his own consciousness. He explains that ‘the sad thing fuckin’ with [the girl from Lights Please] is the chick ain’t even have brains, dummy like a bitch’. It’s apparent from these lyrics that Cole feels somewhat disappointed that he’s hooked up with a girl with whom he struggles to maintain a stimulating conversation. He hyperbolises this distress by claiming that she doesn’t even have a brain, and if she did, then she doesn’t use it properly. Despite the intimate situation he finds himself in, Cole still wants to question the bigger things in life such as how they ‘live broke on the boulevard’, but in answer to this, the girl just wants him to ‘unhook her bra’. By raising serious issues and life questions to this girl at this moment, Cole highlights the importance of this type of shit to him as a person. He then cleverly juxtaposes this line with her merely wanting to get undressed and get it on. There is evidently an underlying theme of the importances of life here, whilst at the same time, the power of sexual persuasion on a man’s mind is also explored. A deep and meaningful conversation is therefore dismissed in favour sexual pleasure and desire.

J. then speaks for all straight men when he highlights sex as ‘that proud feelin’ we get knowin’ that pussy is ours’. Obviously, via this line, Cole is simplifying what every man feels when he gets some, and that is the sense of achievement that the girl is finally comfortable enough to get intimate with him. Cole’s bold statement also emphasizes how fast men lose their logic to their impulse. The female’s vagina evidently has influence/power over him; however a proud masculine feeling is still produced because of the words she is moaning to Cole during their intercourse. But the intercourse is bittersweet (as outlined in the RG explanation) because the sex temporarily gives him pride and satisfaction; the 2 things he failed to obtain when he attempts to speak of real world issues attempting to enlighten her. The classic hook then reinforces the idea of Consciousness and Sex Drive intertwined, painting the girl out to be some kind of angelic figure of redemption when the lights are off, with J. living completely in the moment. The switching off of lights can also be interpreted as a metaphor for the way this girl thinks. Without light, she is blind to all the corruption and dishonesty in the world.

When we get taken into the 2nd verse, we are told that the pair are ‘in the hotel, mirrors on the ceilin’’. What’s clever here is that if the hook symbolises the girls mind, the mirror acts as a metaphor for Cole’s. He can see the reflection of himself with this girl, and this gives him chance to literally reflect upon his impulsive actions within his already philosophical mind. To make things better/worse, ‘she says she wanna blow L’s’ with Cole, which clearly excites him, but also makes him question whether or not it would be a good idea with his mind already incredibly active. Much like in the Cole World album bonus track: Daddy’s Little Girl, she wants to demonstrate to Cole that she can live the way he does and wants to prove to him that she can smoke weed as good as anyone (this bitch want’s an ‘L’ baby!!) This is another example both of Cole using a call-and-response like set of lyrics between him and the girl, but also highlighting again the theme of Sense & Sensibility, or logic over emotion.

When we move towards the end of the 2nd verse, another serious issue is raised by Cole’s consciousness. The following lyrics are incredibly powerful to anyone who has ever had to live without a father figure:

‘And ain’t it shameful, how niggas blame hoes for givin' birth
To a baby that took two to make; coward nigga you a fake
How you gonna look in your son’s face and turn your back
Then go start another family, dawg, what type of shit is that?’

The lyrics echo 2Pac’s ‘Brenda’s got a Baby’, and it’s well known that Cole is a big Pac fan, sampling his work on his track ‘Enchanted’ for example. These lines also foreground and foreshadow the ideas behind his track ‘Lost Ones’ which was to appear on his album, re-enforcing the statement that Cole is very aware of his own work and likes to link subject matters focusing on different perspectives. With these lyrics, Cole takes a step back from his emotions and opts to view things objectively from an intellectual perspective. This is an example of Cole standing up for what is morally right in terms of parenthood; more than likely because of his lack of Paternal support which we are openly told about on many of his tracks.

But once more, J. underlines the contrast between himself and his current lover, to the point where he gives her the final lines of his track, telling Cole that she knows he “wanna change the world but for the night please [can he] just reach over and hit the lights please". Bringing things back to the girl’s perspective, this final line of the song clearly highlights the girl’s shallow views on what Cole has offered as food-for-thought. All she cares about is the sex, more than likely because of Jermaine’s social status as a rapper. What is interesting though, is that even though the line proves her shallow nature; it’s also a way of Cole letting his listeners know subtly, that it is his plan to change the world (rap game) through his music.

I saw in an interview once, that J. Cole had always promised his fans at his gigs that Lights Please would be on his album when it dropped in 2011. Certain fans weren’t happy that Cole included songs on the album which had already appeared on his mixtapes, but you have to take into account that the fans he gained from his album release may never have heard tracks such as ‘In The Morning’ and of course, the track that has been discussed. Besides, it’s not like it affected his album sales, in the week beginning October 15th 2011, Cole World: The Sideline Story hit the #1 spot on the Billboard 200 and less than three months after his debut hit stores; J. Cole received gold certification for sales of more than 500,000 units of the LP.

But moving onto the present day, we’ve heard Cole drop ‘The Cure’ and also tease fans about his 2nd album with his lyric from the DJ Khaled track ‘They Ready’ in which we are told that the rapper is ‘masterminding [his] second album’. The track features the incredibly talented Kendrick Lamar, with whom Cole has struck up a close relationship as of late, with talk since last year of a joint album being worked on once Kendrick’s solo has dropped. If this track is anything to go by, I literally cannot wait for further details on this project…..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQDF3NUheZM

COLE WORLD!