J. Cole - The Off-Season ALBUM REVIEW

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The way that Dreamville basically stole the hype from TDE should be in the history books.


J. Cole has been a rapper that I’ve always been very hot and cold on. His features in the past few years have been fantastic, his contributions to his label’s compilation Revenge of the Dreamers III are pretty great, and his album 4 Your Eyez Only is one of the most underrated and underappreciated albums of the 2010s. He has the technical ability as a rapper, and he’s shown in the past that he can be an entertaining artist, but most of his albums to me have just been a little… boring. That may send wildfires through the internet like Fantano’s opinions on Cole, but that’s just what I think about it. I’m really hoping that The Off-Season is different though, with his career officially coming to a close soon. Is it different? Let’s find out.

Let’s get my favorite part of the album out of the way, and that’s the production. The beats done on here are absolutely fantastic, especially “m y . l i f e” and a previously released track “t h e . c l i m b . b a c k,” which is my personal favorite Cole song ever. The surprise features are also pretty welcome, since Cole tends to be a lone wolf. 21 Savage and Lil Baby give amazing features to the album and bring so much energy. While there is a lot I like about this album, this just isn’t the J. Cole I personally enjoy. I love it when Cole is hungry and wanting attention, but there really wasn’t a lot of that. He’s a lot more laid back on this, and granted, a lot of people like that Cole, I just prefer the other.\

I’m not gonna sit here and say that I didn’t enjoy The Off-Season. Listening to it when it first dropped with the rest of the world was very exciting, but as I listened to it more and the hyped died away, I just heard the same problems that I think J. Cole has been struggling with his entire career. Not without its flaws, J. Cole has created a pretty good entrée for his farewell project, The Fall Off. I just hope that project is much more ambitious than this.


7/10


Listen here

YouTube Music




The Off-Season is a Dreamville release.

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