Hi, everyone. 2thony Disctano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of the new J. Cole album, The Fall-Off.

Here we have the new and, what is said to be, the final album from Jermaine Cole, rapper, producer, songwriter, singer too, Fayetteville hometown hero, who grew to be one of the biggest and most successful hip hop artists of the 2010s. And with all of his albums having gone platinum, some with absolutely no features whatsoever, as they say, there's clearly a love and demand out there for the guy's music, and potentially a much longer career ahead of him, veteran status too.

But he seems more fixated on the idea of bowing out of his career entirely at this point, as The Fall-Off here is a project he has been teasing toward for years now. Even his last record, The Off-Season, was essentially a prelude to this project, and was, in my opinion, one of his most focused efforts so far. And additionally, in the lead up to The Fall-Off, he dropped this Birthday Blizzard '26 EP mixtape of freestyles that had me anticipating Cole having just a fire in his belly when rapping and writing for The Fall-Off.

Of course, Cole also had a few public statements too, saying that he intended for his last album here to be his best work yet, no question. So of course, because of all of that, at least for me, the expectations for this double-disc album are high. And yes, there is some added pressure there with the fact that this thing is over 100 minutes of run time with its two discs of material working in these two concentrated movements, basically depicting the mindsets that Cole was in while revisiting his hometown at ages 29 and 39, respectively. A concept that the more I think about it, the more that it is bewildering, as good as some of the songs on Disc 29 sound.

Because when it comes to Cole's writing and his output at age 29, his views about his hometown, his upbringing, the ways in which hip hop and fame was changing him in his life and his worldview. He wasn't exactly secretive about that at the time, nor was he in the immediate aftermath. On the contrary, dealing in those topics has been J. Cole's bread and butter for over decade now. So honestly, if I really was genuinely curious about what Cole was thinking about a lot of these topics back during the age of 29 and hear him expressing and feeling those thoughts in real time, I can just go back to those albums and hear it.

Maybe, of course, with a bit less experience and perspective, for sure. But part of the point of Disc 29 is for Cole to lyrically and mentally embody the mindset that he was experiencing at that time.

So as impassioned as J. Cole may be to write from this angle for the whole first disc of this record, for the most part, it's an idea that's bound to result in at least some redundancy. There are even points on this album where Cole is hit in real time with the deja vu of what he's saying. "Papa was gone, how to put Trojan on was something I had to discover all on my own / Y'all know the song / I probably been singing this shit for too long," with Cole very much making reference to older tracks like "Wet Dreams", for example, which makes me have to ask: what are bars like these and the surrounding verses really adding to Cole's catalog? Especially as what is being built here as a final statement of his career, other than a Kodak Black type flow over a vaguely Latin jazz-flavored beat.

But when Cole isn't spinning his wheels in the mud on this first disc, it feels like he's engaging in this odd revisionism because a lot of the first half of this album is defined by these very gritty bops with aggressive rapping, dark unflinching truths in the lyrics on cuts like "Two Six", "Poor Thang", "WHO TF IZ U", which has an insane beat switch. Also, the Deuteronomy bar that Cole drops on that track is crazy. Also have to appreciate Cole's continued effort at showing audiences that he truly is a student of the genre, with a piano loop that's pulled from Mobb Deep's "Drop a Gem on 'em", and a performance that is probably the most Eminem coded on the entire record.

These tracks are great listens with great writing, undeniably highlights on The Fall-Off. But also this is not the energy J. Cole was coming at his albums with at age 29. I mean, sure, here and there in Cole's back catalogue, he who's certainly capable of painting a picture of the harsh realities of his upbringing. But on this disc, I don't so much feel like we are going back to a familiar version of J. Cole that we once knew. Like, songs with this kind of content are not predominantly what Cole was making his name on back in 2014. And despite the popularity of records like 4 Your Eyez Only and Forest Hills Drive, these are albums where Cole was often framed as not being gritty enough or maybe even not being artsy enough in comparison to guys like Kendrick Lamar, who he's constantly compared to. Simultaneously, Cole was repeatedly torn apart for being vulnerable in ways on tracks that were often viewed as being inadvertently funny or even cringe.

I get part of the point of this album is for Cole to go back and make music that he couldn't have made on his first record. But in life and in art, there really are no do-overs. Cole isn't going back to this time period to undo any decisions that he made at the time or anything like that. He's simply trying to rap better and maybe make the music that he would have gotten torn apart less over, which if you have the capacity to do that now, that's great. Just do it present day. There's no reason to go back 10 years ago in order to pull it off conceptually.

Again, I do think the first disc of this project features some of the best writing and performances on the entirety of The Fall-Off. But I guess I just don't understand why it needed to happen under the guise of, 'This is me when I was younger, I'm going back to a different mindset, different time period.' Because not only do I not feel like I'm being transported back to another place when listening to these songs, but there aren't many revelations to be had in Cole hitting rewind in this way. Because, again, we've heard a lot of this commentary already before, and we're all literally there for it. I mean, for as present as we could be, given that we're only experiencing Cole's world through his music, like we are here.

And again, to be clear, this is not a slight against many of these songs on the first disc of the album individually. In fact, there are a lot of great songs that stand on the merits of what they are each specifically doing. Like, for example, the song "SAFETY", which I'm more impressed with given Cole's ability to rap and write very passionately from different perspectives, not because it's going back to a time that's not today.

Personally, I felt like the most necessary commentary on the entire first disc, especially given the story behind this album, came by way of the bonus track, "Lonely at the Top", whose perspective feels more present than past to me, with J. Cole dropping a lot of very sobering low-key verses about how he struggles to see his place in music at the moment, not really seeing his influence on the younger generation or a place for him to exist within that context of music and feeling isolated among his contemporaries, also seeing a lot of his heroes fall off, too, in the end. It's like listening to someone lose their love for music or not seeing themselves in the modern musical landscape, which is a very real experience that a lot of music fans have. I mean, it's why a lot of people start tuning out, why a lot of people just only listen to music they grew up with when they were teenagers once they get about 30 or so.

So yeah, again, even if the 'era' concept of Disc 29 is not perfect, it still contains some of Cole's strongest material to date. A handful of weak moments, too, though. These more melodic low-key cuts where Cole leans more into his singing voice, like the very tedious "The Let Out", for example, which features this very over-the-top talk-singing like Cole is trying to do his own version of "Trapped in the Closet". The dude is singing five different vocal parts, and they're all bad. It's like bad thugs in harmony.

But yeah, as far as this retrospective exercise goes, there's a single song on the second disc that somehow does it better than the entirety of Disc 1, that would be, "The Fall-Off is Inevitable", which was an OG teaser track to this record, where Cole pens a couple of very surreal verses where he's watching his life flash before his eyes in reverse. Hitting every major detail from getting married or rather unmarried to seeing his child be unborn, witnessing his death or his funeral, at least. This is a far more intriguing and chilling of an idea than a lot of Disc 29.

Now, the rest of Disc 39 isn't quite as conceptual, at least not in this way. True to Cole's disillusionment with a lot of modern music, he spends a fair amount of time hero worshiping and celebrating some of his faves, like when he's capturing the essence of Tupac through the instrumental and some of the flows on "Old Dog", or the interpolation of Outkast's "Elevators" on "The Villest", which also has a little Erykah Badu credit on the track.

It's not just all surface-level nostalgic vibes, though. The song "I Love Her Again" is Cole trying to ingeniously figure out a way to build on top of Common's legendary, "I Used to Love H.E.R." Cole, of course, explores his own relationship with hip hop, the genre being embodied as a woman. He describes her changes, the way their relationship over time shifts, the bitterness and the falling out as well. Of course, some facts of how all of this progresses can be debated. It is one man's messy and complicated perspective for sure, but it does feel quite real in terms of the details that Cole lays out and the fact that it is his truth. I mean, this is the man's relationship with the style of music he literally built a career on, and he put it all so well and poetically. Maybe it's not the way some of us feel about rap music after a similar span of time, but we don't have the same relationship that Cole does as somebody who's made a life off of it, and a bunch of other factors, too, I'm sure.

I think there could be more debate, though, over the concept of the song "What If", which has Cole writing from an even crazier angle. Basically, he spits a few verses from the perspectives of the Notorious B. I. G. and Tupac, borrowing, I guess, as tastefully as he can from their respective rap styles, and essentially imagines an alternate reality where both of them, rather than allowing the beef between the East Coast and West Coast to bubble up, which, I mean, boiling it down to simply these two guys is difficult and not exactly historical because obviously more factors and more figures were at play than just Biggie and Tupac. But I guess if you could reduce the whole thing down to simply these two, Cole does that and has them essentially writing letters to each other where rather than fighting it out, they gain perspective from each other and hash it out, squash the beef, and go on to live their lives.

Now, I do think that the song comes from a good place and is maybe understandable coming from a guy who is pretty much famous for bowing out of the biggest hip hop beef of his generation. The man's anti-beef credentials are unquestionable. For sure, I think his approach to this track is most definitely well intentioned.

Still, it is worth questioning whether or not J. Cole really has license to write from the perspectives of both of these larger than life figures, even if it is being done out of a relatable desire. And written very well, mind you, too.

The nostalgic vibes continue onto the song "Life Sentence", which is like this radio friendly '90s pop rap cut with acoustic guitar chords and all. A lot of endearing verses about being in love for the long term, building a life with someone. It's a very sweet song despite the fact that the title very knowingly compares being in a relationship like this to having a life sentence put upon you. And J Cole, of course, digs into the lovesick vibes further on the next track, though does so with this very nasally delivery that I don't think complements his rapping very well.

The track "Quik Stop" is relatively quick gut punch of a song, in my view, where Cole, when revisiting his hometown at a later age, essentially runs into a fan who tells him about all the ways in which his music changed his life or helped him get through some really tough times. J Cole responds with these shouty verses that are just at the peak of this intensity I have rarely heard from him before on a track. It's like a bonafide "Stan" moment, but Cole is actually reciprocating the appreciation in a way and finding validity in what he does because of it, which makes the idea that he is quitting entirely past this point kind of painful.

Then, "and the whole world is the Ville" is the final non-bonus track on the second disc. And weirdly, this song is pretty much Cole's entire musical thesis for much of his career just laid right out. Because, yeah, like what I said earlier, there is an element of these two discs that does feel a little redundant. Cole is revisiting a lot of very familiar ideas without really doing too much to juge them up or present them in a new way.

But from Cole's perspective, he doesn't really need to because "the Ville" is the lens through which he understands the world. So whether or not he goes about approaching this topic in a way that is refreshing or novel, it doesn't really matter to him. It's something he has to do regardless. Because especially if he is ending things off here on this album, he has to go back to where it all began. He has to go back to the one thing that has influenced this entire life path of his, that allows him to frame and understand and gain perspective on everything he has known and learned outside of "the Ville".

Because even if the whole world is in fact, not "the Ville", and some could easily categorize this focus as an unhealthy obsession of sorts, "the Ville" is still the universe to J. Cole. Regardless of how famous he becomes or where he ends up in life, everything for him comes back to that. It's arguably a really big contributing factor to what has kept Cole very grounded throughout much of his artistic career, as he has stayed relatively in touch and very down to earth about who he is and where he came from, regardless of where he's been in his catalog. Who Cole is and where he's from has really mattered to him more than anything, even during times when he's professed otherwise. This has even mattered more to him than living up to the title of the best rapper alive or best rapper of his generation in the traditional sense anyway, because that was pretty much proven in the way that he bowed out of the beef.

Clearly, Cole cares more about living up to his own expectations and beating himself out, at least on this record. Even if there are a handful of tracks that I found to be underwhelming, and I don't know if the two-disc approach was the most sensible way of going about this, I do I think at the very least, J. Cole did what he set out to do in terms of accomplishing his best album so far, and also showing his audience and showing all of us that he truly is a simple man of simple wants, desires, and pleasures. He wants to feel validated and loved and accepted, and he wants to be the best version of himself that he can be, even if that best version of himself isn't the best overall person of all time, regardless of what he's attempting to do.

So yeah, again, I do think in his own way, J. Cole is going out on a high note here, and he's accomplished what is essentially the best for him, even if it's not the best overall, which is why I'm feeling about a strong seven on this album.

Anthony Fantano, J. Cole, forever.