Bringing You Up To Speed: J.Cole

A lot has happened to J.Cole since I wrote about the Fayetteville, North Carolina emcee in HipHopAtLunch.com’s first post.

He’s been getting major love from industry insiders, has laid down a handful of impressive guest verses, and is currently working on one of the most anticipated releases of 2010.

If you take a second to watch any of the Youtube.com interviews with J.Cole, then you’ll hear the story of how he came to New York looking to make it big in the music industry.  Like most artists do, he quickly found out that it’s not as easy as television and movies make it seem.

Despite numerous failed attempts, J.Cole’s confidence in the music he was making led him to find a way to get major exposure.  One of Cole’s more notable failed attempts came after waiting hours outside in the rain for a chance to pass on material to Jay-z.  J.Cole finally caught a break, however, after Jay-z heard the young emcee’s self-produced track, “Lights Please,” and signed him to Roc Nation.

What I find most inspiring about J.Cole’s story, is his persistence.  For example, “Lights Please” was recorded during Cole’s senior year of college, a year and a half before it caught Jay-z’s ear!

J.Cole – “Lights Please”

“Lights Please” serves as J.Cole’s first official single, and has been getting major radio love around the country.  That track is a good representation of J.Cole’s style, as he uses inspiration from his everyday life to tell both his and other people’s stories.

In a recent interview with Yahoo.com, J.Cole explained that the song tells the story of a guy who’s searching for answers and trying to find meaning in life, but keeps meeting up with girls who aren’t able to connect with him.

If you haven’t heard The Warm Up yet, I suggest you give it a listen, as its been deemed one of 2009’s best mixtapes by just about every hip hop blog in existence.

Here’s the project’s trailer:

The trailer, which is also used as the intro track on the mixtape, portrays The Warm Up’s overall theme of perusing your dreams.  The successful project follows J.Cole’s first big release, The Come Up, which fans have deemed to be more lyrically focused.

This lyricism helped J.Cole land a guest spot on “A Star Is Born,” off Jay-z’s Blueprint 3, which brought the emerging artist nation-wide exposure.

Jay-z – “A Star is Born” (Featuring J.Cole)

On “A Star Is Born,” we see Jay-z cleverly working in rhymes about hip hop artists who have left a mark on the game over the last couple decades, as well as giving a little history on his own presence in the game.  J.Cole’s feature on the track by itself, shows his relevance to the current state of hip hop.

J.Cole used his feature to spit one of his most quoted lines to date, “The flow cold as the shoulders of gold diggin hoes, when a broke nigga approaches.”  That line earned him the respect of a lot of listeners who had previously never heard anything from the Roc Nation artist.

Another impressive guest verse from J.Cole showed up on Wale’s debut album, Attention Deficit.  I imagine that the collaboration was created while the two emcees were on Hov’s Bluepring 3 tour.

Wale – “Beautiful Bliss” (Featuring J.Cole)

Melanie Fiona provided the smooth hook, while J.Cole stole the show from Wale on “Beautiful Bliss.”

The lines put forth by Cole on Wale’s album are some of his best work to date, and if you want to take a closer look at J.Cole’s verse, I have it written out here.

Another great feature came a few weeks ago with “Just Begun,” an early leak off Reflection Eternal’s upcoming Revolutions Per Minute album.

Reflection Eternal – “Just Begun” (Featuring J.Cole, Jay Electronica, & Mos Def)

Reflection Eternal got a great list of artists together for “Just Begun,” as any track that features lyrics from both Jay Electronica and J.Cole is bound to get love from the blogs!

Despite not being as show stopping as the Wale feature, J.Cole definitely walked away with the best lines on “Just Begun.”  Here’s a closer look at his lyrics.

After hearing J.Cole kill these guest spots, I can’t help but wonder who’ll be featured on the his own debut album.  Having said that, a recent tweet about Young Jeezy has my hopes high!

In addition to the coveted feature spots, it looks like the album will have production from J.Cole himself as well as No I.D., Science, and possibly Pharrell.

Be sure to check out JColeFans.com to stay up on everything J.Cole.