J Cole has done life on his terms. J Cole rarely gives interviews. In fact, he rarely does anything that most of his rap peers consider normal. It is part of the reason there is a gulf between his standing in the rap game and his popularity.
This standing has almost nothing to do with his talent. His talent is pre-eminent. If rap talent was the primary metric of measurement, Cole should be in elevated company, dwelling in the presence of Jay-Z, Nas, and their ilk. If rap talent was the primary metric of measurement, Cole would arguably be considered the best rapper of his generation.
Yet in this age, this hip-hop culture, talent is merely one component of popularity. Cole has almost no appetite for the others. When he is not working, he retreats to his home in the woods of Raleigh, North Carolina. He will go months without anyone, except those in the community he lives, seeing him. This while his peers are indulging the hedonistic lifestyle that is so captivating for so many. In hip-hop, exposure is a currency. The more eyes and ears trained on what you’re doing and saying outside of your ‘day job’, the better. It is a brutal existence but, most reason, a necessary one if you’re to stay at the forefront of the culture’s mind, and on its lips.
Cole is different. This is what makes him so intriguing to those taken by more than just engineered perception. His humanity is revealed through his vulnerability. This plays out in the public eye. Take, for example, his most recent feature on Bia’s ‘London’. In a revealing Instagram post, Cole wonders out loud about his suitability for the track. ‘I Asked BIA to come through the studio for some whole other shit. First time meeting her. We chop it up. She plays me this new song she had just did. Mannnnnnn in that moment I was blown away.
‘I thought about this song for a month straight, it was my favourite song and I only heard it one time. She hit me recently and sent me the song (she musta knew I wanted to hear it again!!!) and I was just grateful to have it in my possession. When the thought and conversation came up about me adding a verse, I was excited but genuinely nervous cuz I didn’t even see how the song could be better after what she did to it. I didn’t want to f**k nothing up! I’m grateful I ended up catching the right wave.’ Scour his social media platforms and you’ll find a way that is the antithesis of most modern rappers.
In a landscape where self-promotion at the expense of others feels like a duty for survival, Cole often celebrates peers who have beaten him to major awards. The most recent example of this is Cardi B, whom he shouted out after her 2019 Grammy win for Best Rap Album. ‘I don’t never wanna be propped up by tearing somebody else down,’ he wrote on Twitter. ‘Seeing Cardi B win a Grammy makes me feel like I won.’ Consider that his album, KOD, a widely acclaimed production, wasn’t even nominated, and you get a measure of the man. Indeed, given that Cole is a relative media recluse, his social media utterances are a conduit to his mind and character. It is a window into who Jermaine Cole is, not just what he does.
A recent Twitter exchange with a 250-follower strong sports troll supports this assertion. ‘Bro at this point he has no football left in him man he been throwing against the wind and ghost dbs (defensive backs) for years,’ wrote the kid, in response to Cole’s retweet of a post pondering whether Colin Kaepernick could be picked up by an NFL team in the off-season. Five years ago, Kaepernick was exiled from the league after refusing to relent kneeling during the national anthem, played prior to kick-off, as a sign of solidarity with those who suffered police brutality.
‘Respectfully lil bro, how could you know what he has in him and what he doesn’t?’ Cole’s retort began. ‘And, respectfully, you’re 100% right about throwing against the wind and to ghost db’s. But always remember, he’s been doing that every day for five years, when the entire world was saying he had zero shot of ever playing again. Have you ever wanted something that bad?’
Cole’s first rap name, ‘Therapist’, was given to him by ‘Bomm Sheltuh’ a rap duo from his hometown of Fayetteville, North Carolina. He appreciated the gesture, but dropped the moniker four years later, deciding to go by an abbreviation of his name instead. Yet the name feels like a prophetic declaration. Cole’s lyrics, and his musing at large, have a distinctly therapeutic feel. Perhaps it is best described as a medicine for a culture sick from self-indulgence.
‘It’s a practical joke or a wink from God because in my life – now as an adult man – I realise that I play that role for a lot of people, and willingly and lovingly,’ he told iconic hip-hop figure Nardwuar about the name. ‘I love to listen to people talk; I love to ask them questions that may allow them to open up a part of themselves that maybe they hadn’t thought about before or accessed before. So ironically, I have become the therapist without that rap name.’
His self-awareness is astounding and reveals itself in his art and life in equal measure. In 2012, Cole was nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist. His family gathered in their home to watch the show, while Cole prepared for a show in New York. He lost to indie folk band Bon Iver, who was part of a group of nominees that included Skrillex and Nicki Minaj. It devastated him, but in hindsight, the experience shaped who he would eventually become. ‘It would have been disastrous for me, because subconsciously it would’ve been sending me a signal of like “Okay, I am supposed to be this guy”,’ he told GQ in 2018. ‘But I would’ve been the dude that had that one great album and then fizzled out.’
Instead, he is ‘that dude’ who was Jay-Z’s first signing for his Roc Nation label. ‘That dude’ who went platinum with no features. ‘That dude’ who produced celebrated tracks for Kendrick Lamar and a clutch of other giants in the rap game. ‘That dude’ who paused a rap career to chase a childhood dream of playing basketball professionally. This took the form of a 37-year-old Cole uprooting his life in America to play for Rwanda Patriots in the Basketball Africa League in 2021, and later signed to play for Scarborough Shooting Stars of the Canadian Elite Basketball League. ‘That dude’ has lived his life on his own terms. In the process, he has become a reference point for us to do just that.
Words by Ryan Vrede
Photography: gallo/gettyimages, courtesy images
