Jam of the Week: J. Cole

It’s time to express my love for J. Cole.

I’m not the biggest rap fan. I like a hot beat more than a smooth one filled with dope bars – except when it comes to J. Cole. I like everything he makes.

I’m not sure where it comes from. Considering I’m a white college kid who grew up in the ‘burbs, I can’t relate to most of what he says. But his stories, soothing voice, and the time that I went to Milwaukee to see him that keep me coming back.

Milwaukee was the first time I had traveled anywhere more than 20 minutes to see a concert. My two buddies, Joe Bizel and Strusz joined me on the trip (Strusz is the one that put me on to J. Cole with The Warm Up). We stayed on the sketchy part of town where the Taco Bell across the street from our hotel had a bulletproof glass drive thru window like this:

So, it was an experience. The concert was great, but the real kicker was how Cole finished off the thing. He lets the beat of his song “Farewell” play on for a good 15 minutes as he points out people in the crowd and says, for example, “Bulls shirt, farewell!” saying bye to a dude in the crowd wearing a Bulls shirt.

As you can see in the crowd, everyone is holding up shit to get noticed by Cole. We were somewhere in the middle of the pack, and my buddy Joe Bizel was holding up his custom-made Dreamville hat, which is Cole’s old label he started before he got signed by Jay Z (another awesome story for a later date).

It had been about 7 or 8 minutes, and I was getting sick of all these stupid things gettin’ called out like “shorty in the pink pants, farewell!” Now, Joe Bizel is about 5’8” with short arms and I’m 6’0” with the wingspan of Tyson Chandler, so I took the hat from him and put it as high in the air as I could. 2 minutes later, Mr. Cole made my night, and probably the best moment of my 2011 (it happens at 0:25):

He said “Dreamville hat!” 3 times!!! It was the only shoutout that was called out and pointed at (watch Cole, he points at us hard) that many times. You can hear how short the ones before us were.

So yes, October 8, 2011 was the day that J. Cole officially stole my heart and I will be loyal to him like I have been with Cudi no matter how weird or coked up he gets.

And now to the jam. Cole had this stretch of tweets last night:

The first one, “One of those nights” led Struszie’s genius ass to yell “New J. Cole song tonight, I’m callin’ it!” He was right and it looks like more to come tomorrow. This jam is not off of Cole’s upcoming album, Born Sinner, but it’s a classic, smooth Cole song. Enjoy “Cole Summer” with me ya’ll.

TWEET US YOUR JAM OF THE WEEK (JOTW) AT @The2Associates AND YOU WILL BE RETWEETED. IF IT’S REAL GOOD, YOU MIGHT JUST BE FEATURED IN A FUTURE JAM OF THE WEEK (JOTW). GET JAMMIN’.