Kendrick Lamar is one of the best musicians to ever live. By turning on the radio to any hip-hop station, one of his songs (or a song that features him) is bound to be playing sometime during the day. While he might be king of the game, J. Cole represents the soul of rap. His albums, which used to be more aggressive and bitter towards white America, have taken a switch from his past albums due to self-realization and have become more peaceful. Both of these fantastic rappers came to a similar realization around the same time. While many critics and companies such as XXL and Complex have published articles swearing they are sister albums, it’s false. Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” and J. Cole’s 2014 “Forest Hills Drive” are viewed by …show more content…
Coles 3rd studio album named after a childhood home of his. The album starts with a very whimsical, reminiscent tone using a lot of strings and soft percussion beats to keep the listener relaxed giving them a sense of nostalgia. In the song, “Wet Dreamz”, Cole uses samples of songs from the 90’s to help give off a feeling that the song was released during his childhood. The tone becomes a little harsher and the songs become more centered on the stereotypical rap subjects as the album progresses; money, women and fame. The songs he samples during this part of the album aren’t from the 90’s but rather from modern day rap songs of contemporary artists like Pusha T among other artists. The songs he samples help set the tone of the song to match the time period of his life that he reflects upon, therefore, simulating the emotions that he was feeling during that point of his life. The album in a whole, is about Cole realizing what makes him happy, not money or women, but rather family and love. That’s really the only point of the song where the themes of all the different songs come together pointing to the message that Cole wanted to prove all along, love. The story that J. Cole is telling is his own modern day journey to enlightenment, very different from his more aggressive counterpart, Kendrick …show more content…
He saw police brutality to his neighbors and horrific gang fights among his classmates. The album starts with a song called “Wesley’s Theory”, which essentially lays out the main idea of the album, blacks being institutionally oppressed in modern day America, and uses Wesley Snipes as his mascot. As the album proceeds further, he explains how he was institutionalized by America and the racist legislation in place. The tone throughout the album is resentful towards the world. At least that is the case until the last two songs, where the tone completely turns around and almost becomes celebratory and hopeful. During the final song, he explains his journey to find the idea that the black community needs to join together and respect one another in order to survive the hostile world that they live in. The samples he uses all sound similar, they all have a boom-bap feel and bring a tone to the album that makes it sound reminiscent of early black music in the 70’s and 80’s supporting his theme of black pride. At one point he even uses a sample of an interview from Tupac back in 1994, who was one of the pioneers of rap and who Kendrick got a lot of his ideas from. Lastly, Kendrick’s narrative explains his path of going through the streets and realizing that he needs to lead his people to fight the institutions that bind them. He leads listeners through the process of how he found this concept out,
When listening to rap music we get to experience the environments that the MC lived through. Most MC’s use music as a way of coping with reality, their violent and hard life. In this way they find a kind of shelter in their songs even though these songs describe their life and how hard it is.
In the article written by Shamontiel Vaughan entitled "Why J. Cole's '2014 Forest Hills Drive' is best rap album of the year,” the author makes a great point about artist having meaning to their music. The meaning behind J. Cole’s music consist of how the lyrics are based on his past in the state of North Carolina. Shamontiel talked about how rhyme patterns are nothing without a meaning. She explains how artist are comfortable with meaningless flows with words that shows expression that match the rhythm, but their content has basically no meaning. Most Artists rap about a bunch of nothing with a passionate flow, that at some point rappers need to tap into the true meaning of Hip-Hop, which is having flow and a message. The only true reason why I fell in love with J. Cole as an artist, is because of the fact of where he was born and raised with the support of his community. Lastly his platinum albums were so great, and he is different from any other artist.
The theme of lines 1-5 in, ¨Untitled 1¨ by Tupac Shakur is that African Americans have been oppressed, over many generations. He describes the world, ¨as a ghetto, that they cannot leave,¨ referring to ghettos such as
Mose Def’s “Hip Hop” works as a song and as a poem. He is telling the world through his words what it was like growing up as a black man. “Speech is my hammer, bang the world into shape, now let it fall….(Hungh!!) (5). He talks about being restless, can’t sit still to finish his words. Growing up in Brooklyn, standing on the street corners, he started rapping. He spoke the “King’s English, but caught a rash on my lips” (23). It was easier to express
The second song, Change, also shows the problem with systematic oppression. J. Cole recounts the time that he saw his friend get shot. This is the main point of the whole album and the song revolves around the tale of this friend who is killed. The last song, 4 Your Eyez Only, brings everything back together and tells the full narrative of his friend’s unfortunate fate. While attacking the life that many people glorify and empathizing with those who are stuck in this life, J Cole closes out his fourth album on a hopeful note. Using the perspective of his deceased friend, he writes a song (the actual album), for his daughter, condemning all that is bad and hoping for her to grow into a somebody. In a heart touching verse the father states “Maybe you hate me, maybe you miss me, maybe you spite
The genre of rap and hip-hop music has taken on a whole new persona in the generation of millennials. Fortunately, there are rappers such as Jermaine Cole, or “J Cole”, who work to hold on to a pure form of hip-hop and strive to portray a message in all of their songs. J Cole is a southern rapper with a northern style and flow. His main messages in all of his music is to speak the truth about his life and the world around him. You can listen to all his songs from the start of his career to now and you could understand who he is as and essentially listen to his growth as person. His song entitled “January 28th” is no exception to transparent style. The theme of the songs is to let his audience know that he extraordinary and he gives pieces
"Certain songs might tell you a little something about my upbringing. Certain songs might tell you how I relate to others life experiences. On the album I never get specific on all my dirt because I don't feel I need to talk about that. I want to put the spotlight on Mobile, and give the listeners an idea of what's going on here from a young black mans perspective." Listen up!
Throughout both songs, the artists J. Cole and Kanye West describe shortcuts that the younger generation of people would take to try and obtain the illusion of success. “A Tale of 2 Cities” by J. Cole describes a scenario
Lamar has been successfully achieving his dream by rapping about the stress and difficult situations he has encountered but strongly claims that we will all be alright in his song, “Alright.” He released a song called “i” that reflects how violence has increased in the cities and how he wishes everyone should love each other as humans. His last song on “To Pimp A Butterfly” called “Mortal Man” he states “only because you don’t wear the same color as mine, that doesn’t mean I can’t respect you as a human being.” He clearly states how he understands the reputations of other gang members may seem important but should all still respect others as people. Lamar has been a role model to several students from the city of Compton that was able to create a scholarship called “Be Alright” that is based off the same song called “Alright.” Kendrick Lamar has been respectively producing music for his fans without a doubt of impressive beats and
Cole’s musical idols, which greatly influenced his musical style. His style captures the attention from younger generations and the adolescent population, whom also came from an uneasy childhood and along the way lost motivation. “I 'm here to spread a message of hope. Follow your heart. Don 't follow what you 've been told you 're supposed to do.” (Music times, 2014) Through this message, J. Cole constantly portrays to be an ambition seeking activist. He hopes to project hope in those who are struggling by sharing his life challenges and voicing how he overcame
I feel for Jaz and Lil’ buck they had similar beginnings, influenced and developed from different things, along with starting out being popular on the streets. There was nothing to really base them off of when they started so they had to learn as they went. There were things and people before them that helped such as blues and ragtime for jazz, and his sister and friends for Lil’ Buck. The origins of both are in the south. For jazz and Lil Buck imprecision seems to be a key things. Now jazz is much more structured. Lil Buck has developed his talent so to us it may seem everywhere and very fluid, but him it is structured but still improvised which makes it new and interesting for the viewers. Like jazz Lil Buck people enjoy the experience
With poetry coming in many different styles today, writing comes easy for some. One way that poetry is written today is in the form of rap. The artist known as "J Cole" is one of the best rappers of the 21st century. J Cole went double platinum with top hits such as "Wet Dreamz" and "Love Yourz". In both of these songs Cole connects the listener's with relatable stories and scenarios. Both of these songs are forms of poetry somehow.
...all these aspects correlate with one another. That Hip hop is a cultural tool formed out of need to take a stance on the issues that relate with the black community. And that it’s a voice to relate and unite people who share the same struggles on which to advocate change.
The song starts off by a preview of interviews from football star Colin Kaepernick, to LeBron James and also from President Obama where they are discussing political differences that are country current politicians are deemed to being “openly racist” . This automatically sets the mood that the song is going to be an informative piece, not a song that is used to party and dance too. When 21 Savages starts rapping he starts off by being very descriptive that he isn’t going to be rapping about his usual stuff but, this time about a problem that his people are facing in our culture. The melody of the song is a full cadence because 21 Savage doesn’t really break up his rap into verses in this song, it is like a short story. The harmony of the song is a drone, the beat was made by Metro Boomin and the beat is continuous throughout the whole song.
well that's what i thought until i dug down deeper into understanding. J Cole gun is his pen and his ammo is the ink never running out. So he gets to continue to write his lyrics down even the things that nobody wants to address like the elephant in the room. That's one of the reasons so many people across the world love J Cole music because instead of just coming out and telling you the message he makes you dig deeper into understanding and when you do that you might start looking at yourself