Winter, War, and The Warm-Up

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Something I never see mentioned in retrospectives about J. Cole’s The Warm Up is the fact that, just ten days after its release on June 15th, 2009, Michael Jackson died on June 25th. Admittedly, there’s no obvious cultural reason to connect these events. They overlapped for me because discovering J. Cole was an encounter with a rapper still unknown to the wider world. Michael Jackson, though, had reached the pinnacle of artistic excellence critically and commercially, becoming a globally renowned phenomenon and one of the greatest entertainers to ever walk the Earth, forward or backward. The day of his death I remember being with my dad, driving to bowling practice, and the car radio was on. We were about 15 minutes away when breaking news announced that Michael had died. Other cars seemed to receive the message right as we did. Mouths were wide open. Cell phones were ringing. All motion came to a crawl. At that moment I knew the world had lost someone extraordinary.  

Only after Michael’s passing did it occur to me how his celebrity had already transcended conventional fame before my birth. I never had the chance to see him as a new artist, or attend his tours, or buy his records, or observe firsthand how he re-imagined pop stardom and Black music royalty. All that happened before my time. I saw, heard, and knew Michael Jackson only as an aftershock of how he had already shaken up the world. J. Cole, though, did not belong to a time before mine. He had no history with my parents or their parents. His name raised no eyebrows, wobbled no tables, caused no stir or stampede. Unlike his contemporary Drake, no nationally syndicated TV series had ever put him on my television. Music was how I found him, and I followed his career in all the ways that, for Michael, I never could.

Early on, I estimated Cole as an underground emcee with Top 40 promise, likely to have a respectable career off punchlines, mixtapes, and Billboard-charting rap and R&B records. Someone who, in time, would become for Fayetteville, North Carolina, what Cassidy is for Philadelphia, what Fabolous is for Brooklyn. In other words, not someone who would become, as we now know, a bigger rap star than Cassidy and Fabolous combined. I don’t write that to dismiss them — Cass and Fab were two of my favorite rappers, when singles like “I’m a Hustla’” and “Breathe” were on the radio — but neither one went on to have several multi-platinum and even diamond records. That's partially because of their timing. By arriving just before the internet age, they didn't benefit from the huge online marketing era that started to blossom with the explosion of social media and music bloggers. 

The type of rapper Cass, Fab, and others epitomized, those who could rhyme well and occasionally make breakthrough, mainstream radio-friendly records, no longer described J. Cole following the 2014 release of 2014 Forest Hills Drive. After that album, his stature in rap couldn’t be minimized or shrunk to fit within an underground box. He was a power player. Able to go platinum without features. Dropping full-length projects with little notice and topping the Billboard 200 like Beyoncé. 

By 2023, a year before the tenth anniversary of Forest Hills Drive, his position in the music industry had taken the shape of a rarely-seen but often-heard supporting voice, maintaining a governing presence through a smorgasbord of high-profile rap features. He delivered each one with a precision and polish that worked in all pockets of the genre, his co-stars ranging from Benny the Butcher to BIA, Lil Yachty to 21 Savage and Lil Durk. That’s how he stayed in the culture’s good graces despite inconsistencies as a solo artist. That communal approach, one of shared artistry as a feature on other rappers' records, extended to his annual Dreamville Festival and the celebrated 2019 collaboration album, Revenge of the Dreamers III. Besides a disappointing public dispute with Chicago rapper Noname and an awkward interview with Florida rapper Lil Pump, Cole’s relationships with his rap peers was overwhelmingly fraternal, and his reputation was one of benevolent ruler in a rap kingdom built with a dollar and a dream. 

As we entered, I noticed across the room, standing, smoking hookah, was Drake. Next to him was a DJ, who played nothing but Drake records. He held my attention for only a moment because so much was happening around me.

In terms of consistent hits, constant album releases, and Midas-like appearances as featured artists, the only rappers in Cole’s class with a greater, more prestigious kingdom in rap were Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Where they differed is in how much wear and tear Drake had accumulated in his efforts to be ubiquitous — not only musically, but psychologically, too. The wide-eyed, happy-to-be-here, heart-on-my-sleeve spirit of his early work was replaced by a more callous, villainous persona rooted in bitterness, discontent and vengeance. The root of this transformation involves too many bruises, bumps and beefs for this essay, but remarkably, it seemed no amount of transgressions or miscalculations would eclipse his colossal success.