I know there’s a lot of love for J. Cole. I know there’s a lot of people who think he’s one of the GOATS, a lyrical mastermind on par with Kendrick Lamar.

Eh.

Yeah, that’s my opinion on Jermaine Cole, the Fayetteville raised rapper. Eh. He isn’t bad per say, but I mean, how people speak of his abilities you might think he’s the second coming of Kanye. Look, he has some good songs, I’m not saying he doesn’t. Hell, most of his albums aren’t even bad in my opinion. He’s just… okay. Six albums, and most of them are generally just well, a bit of the same. Don’t get me wrong, we all know J. Cole has some amazing tracks. Tracks that were on repeat for days 

When someone is expanding their musical palette, and is jumping from a lot of mainstream trap music a lot of listeners land on J. Cole — his barrier to entry is pretty low, and his style of rapping creates a sense of higher and more “intellectual” musical enjoyment, while still being relatively easy to grasp. His storytelling is rather simple compared to even artists much less experienced and popular, on a “versus battle” of storytelling PROM / KING simply wipes his most story based songs like Wet Dreamz, and 4 Your Eyez Only is good, if not overrated for how much praise it receives.

Again, I don’t want to say J. Cole is bad. I don’t want that to be the takeaway from this article; no — I just want to say there are so many better artists out there of the same class and J. Cole is simply, well, overrated. 

Overall, I’d rate J. Cole a low seven to a high six. If you like J. Cole, try out artists like Noname, Freddie Gibbs, or Westside Gunn.