J Cole released his debut mixtape in 2007, and now, nearly two decades later and after six back-to-back US No 1 albums, the North Carolina MC is still wrestling with the weight of so much hope heaped upon him. He is framing The Fall Off as a graceful bowing out – “to do on my last what I was unable to do on my first”, he has said – and it’s almost as if he is a student coming to the end of a long period of study, with this double album as his graduate thesis.
Across 24 tracks and 101 minutes, The Fall Off is full of technical proficiency, raw lyrical skill, citation, interpolation and sampling, and it attempts nothing less than to embody a half-century of hip-hop. Through direct and indirect references, lessons unfold throughout. The Fall-Off Is Inevitable is inspired by Nas’s 2001 Stillmatic track Rewind. I Love Her Again is an obvious nod to Common’s I Used to Love HER. Bunce Road Blues borrows lyrics from Usher’s Nice & Slow but connects to R&B’s present with guest vocals from Nigerian singer Tems. The Let Out is reminiscent of SpottieOttieDopaliscious from OutKast’s Aquemini, and so forth: all ample material for audiences to think through hip-hop’s past and future.
But not every fan wants to study, and those who do are left with questions. The Fall Off seems like an attempt to convey Cole’s growth and development but it’s lacking in the emotional depth that comes from real human interactions: he is the only fully realised person on this album, and the people he engages with, both metaphorical and real, seem to function more as props.
On Legacy, he confesses his earlier callow attitude towards women – “I need a Yelp for hoes / I need to read reviews” – but by the time we get to Life Sentence, a nod to DMX’s How’s It Going Down, those impulses are tamed by his marriage to long-term partner Melissa Heholt: “Found out who I want to be / Slowly, but surely he cut off his hoes / If you gone do it, do it right / Put ring on your finger, now me and you is doing life.” She gives birth to his two sons, making him a thankful husband and father, but for a four-verse song billed as the “realest one” in his discography, his wife is sketched lightly, a strangely faceless presence.
Like many tracks here, it’s pure autobiography, and while any autobiography is fascinating to fans, they don’t always illuminate broader truths. On Safety, Cole keeps the lens squarely on him even as he broadens the cast list, rapping from the perspective of people who have messages from home for this now-famous star (it might immediately bring to mind Nas’s One Love, or perhaps the most famous epistolary rap song, Eminem’s Stan). But again, despite the letter-writing device, it feels like these thoughts are merely J Cole’s.
He is stronger when examining hip-hop itself, and at times the album reminds me of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man. In the book’s famous Battle Royal scene, the naive narrator believes he’s been invited to give a speech. When he arrives, he’s blindfolded at the door and forced into a brutal competition, fighting against other young Black men for the entertainment of the drinking and cheering crowd. Relatedly, the public rap battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake – which briefly involved Cole before he apologised and bowed out, to the consternation of many – had fans wondering if Cole would have more to say about the feud on The Fall Off. He addresses it obliquely on What If by citing hip-hop history, channelling the Notorious BIG and 2Pac to form a conversation that might have prevented two of the genre’s most famous tragedies. It’s another device that may seem a bit heavy-handed, but Cole understands that violence and death are cash crops in the current attention economy, and that the stakes remain high.
Like Ellison writing the fight scene in Invisible Man, Cole uses The Fall Off to write about new takes on old practices in the US: the fickleness of fans, the intoxicating allure of the limelight and the spectacle of Black male combat are all addressed. Toward the end of Bombs in the Ville/Hit the Gas, present-day J Cole offers sage advice to his younger self: “Fame is a drug you was chosen to take / Unfortunately, can’t be sober and great / You’re just like a flower the world wanna hold / They sniff on your petals until you get old / And then they dispose, a new flower grows / Can’t take it personal, that’s just how it go.”
Fellow students of hip-hop will notice the drum track sounds like Nigga What, Nigga Who (Originator 99) by Cole’s former mentor, Jay-Z, and Jay-Z’s former mentor, Jaz-O. For better or worse, The Fall Off is J Cole, the student, fully transitioning into J Cole, the teacher. If he’s truly finished recording music, then perhaps this album will stand not as his thesis, but his instruction manual to others: a masterful, deeply knowledgeable but rather brittle read.
