Image via Getty/Isaac Baldizon
Next week just might be the biggest week in J. Cole's life because his highly anticipated sophomore album, Born Sinner, hits stores. Of course, the album has already hit the Internet—it leaked last week and Cole opted to bite the bullet and just stream the album for free on his site.
But the leak might end up helping Cole. So far, the album has received positive reviews for Cole's improved production and the honesty in his rhymes (check out our first impressions right here). Highlighted by "Let Nas Down," Cole continues to reveal the intimate details of his life. Still, despite learning about Cole through his music, we're willing to bet there's plenty you still don't know about the Roc Nation rapper. So with his album a week away, here are 25 Things You Didn't Know About J. Cole.
As a teenager in Fayetteville, J. Cole was down with a rap duo called Bomm Sheltuh.
Cole became serious about rapping at age 15 when he hooked up Bomm Sheltuh. The group's members, Nervous Reck and FilthE Ritch, became mentors to Cole and he stayed in touch with them for years.
Before calling himself J. Cole, his original rap names were Blaza and then Therapist.
When J. Cole first got down with Bomm Sheltuh (as in, Bomb Shelter), he used to go by the rap name Blaza. But they all agreed the name had to go, so he dug through the dictionary and ended up with the name Therapist. However, a name like Therapist was quite problematic during the Myspace era, because when you see a URL like myspace.com/therapist it kinda looks like his name is The Rapist. Arrested Development fans know what we mean. He eventually adopted the moniker J. Cole before dropping The Come Up.
J. Cole used to work at a skate rink in Fayetteville where, at times, he had to dress up as a kangaroo, the skating rink's mascot.
A lot of J. Cole's everyman appeal comes from the fact that he lived such an average life. Like many of us, he had a series of fairly crappy jobs growing up. As a teenager, he worked at a skating rink where he had to occasionally dress up as a damn kangaroo. And you think your job sucks.
In his younger years, J. Cole once sported a rat-tail hair style with a "Bobby Brown fade."
If you're visualizing that image and think it can't get any worse, trust us it does. After telling GQ UK about his worst haircut, he went on to say, "It was long enough to wrap around my face. I used to chew on the end and bite it." Eww.
J. Cole started producing on his own at age 15, when his mother got him a $1,300 ASR-X for Christmas.
If that $1,300 sounds like a lot of money, it was. Especially considering that Cole's mom was a single mother and she was just a postal worker. In fact, in exchange for the ASR Cole agreed to buy his own clothes for the next year, skip out on getting a birthday present, and had to pay his own way to basketball camp the next summer.
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J. Cole started rapping at age 12 after seeing his cousin from Louisiana rap.
Thanks to Cole's cousin, when he first started rapping he based his flow on Master P and was rhyming words like "soulja" and "doja." It was until later did he start to listen to rappers like Jay-Z and Nas.
J. Cole met his long time collaborator Elite through a Canibus message board.
Cole was obviously an early adopter to the Internet. He was on Canibus forums back in 1998 which is how he hooked up with producer Elite. At this point, Cole and Elite have been working together for years, including tracks on Born Sinner.
J. Cole credits Canibus' first album, Can-I-Bus , for changing his perspective on rap music and his approach to songwriting.
Cole is truly a Canibus fan. When doing our Wiz Khalifa cover story, we ran into Cole backstage as he and Wiz quizzed each other about who knew more lyrics to Canibus' "100 Bars." Too bad Canibus bizarrely dissed Cole on "J Clone" only to apologize later.
Despite sampling Kanye on his single "Work Out," he considers it the worst song on 'Cole World: The Sideline Story'
Nas might not have been a fan of "Work Out," but it turns out Cole wasn't a fan of his source material, Kanye West's "The New Workout Plan." According to Cole, College Dropout is his favorite Yeezy album but "The New Workout Plan" is the type of song he usually skips. However, hearing it one day just sparked an idea that lead the "Work Out" being made and Nas being disappointed.
J. Cole was the first-chair violinist for the Terry Sanford Orchestra as a child.
You can actually catch a clip of Cole playing the violin right here. But we wish we had footage of him playing at the Terry Sanford High School auditorium back in October 26, 1999. Not only did Cole rock out playing the theme songs from "Batman" and "Mission" Impossible" but he also was the first-chair in the orchestra.
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J. Cole could have made it as a walk-on for the St. John's Men's Basketball team.
However, Cole never made the team because he didn't bother to attend callbacks. Still, we kind of question Cole's basketball skills, after all he couldn't even beat Complex's former staff writer Damien Scott in a game of one-on-one. And Damien was wearing boat shoes!
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In college, J. Cole was the president of the pan-African student coalition, Haraya.
Although he wasn't on the basketball team, Cole did partake in student life. During his senior year, he became the president of the pan-African student coalition, Haraya.
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J. Cole wore a shirt that read, "Produce For Jay-Z or Die Tryin'" on Aaron Reid's episode of My Super Sweet 16.
Back in 2006, when Cole was still attending St. Johns, one his friends was an intern at Def Jam. She invited him to the 40/40 Club for Aaron Reid's birthday. Cole didn't like the idea of attending a Sweet 16 but was convinced to attend when he heard Kanye West, Swizz Beatz, and Jay-Z would all be there.
"I just kinda threw on my button-up," said Cole about the party, to BET. "I had a shirt underneath my button-up that said, 'Produce for Jay-Z or die trying.'" Jay actually was at the party, but he walked right past Cole without noticing his shirt. Once Cole realized it was Jay who walked past, it was already too late.
He not only attended Dave Chappelle's Block Party, but he was in the front row.
After winning tickets to Dave Chappelle's Block Party, Cole went down to Brooklyn to catch the show. In the film Dave Chappelle's Block Party, Cole actually makes routine cameos during the shots of the crowd. You can also spot Complex's former staff writer, and Cole's former roommate, Damien Scott standing next to him throughout the film.
After receiving an academic scholarship, J.Cole graduated Magna Cum Laude from St. Johns University.
At St. Johns, J.Cole was originally a computer science major, but he eventually switched to communications. When he graduated in 2007, he had a 3.8 grade-point average and earned Magna Cum Laude honors. However, Cole doesn't seem satisfied with those results, on "Villuminati" he recently rapped, "Couple more A's I would have been a Summa Cuma Laude."
J. Cole attended Kanye West's first SOB's show in NYC in 2004.
Dave Chappelle's Block Party wasn't the only major event Cole was in the crowd for. He also attended Kanye West's first SOBs show in NYC, later saying that after the show he knew Kanye would be a legend. Cole would later play SOBs himself in 2010.
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When J. Cole first moved to New York City, he got a job as a basketball coach for kids in Queens.
Cole had a number of odd jobs while living in New York City. One of them was being a basketball coach for kids ages 9 to 13 in Kew Gardens, Queens. Cole described the experience saying, "They struck me as the type of kids whose parents had money. They were terrible, but I enjoyed it. Even though they sucked."
While living in New York, Cole's landlord Muhammad allowed him to slide on his rent a few times.
If you have a nice landlord, consider yourself a lucky person. While struggling to get his rap career popping and living in New York, Cole was short on rent more than a few times. But his landlord Muhammad liked him and let him slide a few times after Cole promised to pay him back. When Cole finally did get signed and received his signing bonus, he paid back Muhammad all he owed plus interest as a thanks.
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After college, while searching for a record deal, J.Cole got a job as an ad salesman at a newspaper and as a bill collector.
Another odd job Cole had was as a salesman for a newspaper. But he wasn't very good at it, he never actually sold an actual ad and his coworker would let Cole get credit for his sales just to put some numbers on the board.
Cole wasn't much better at bill collecting either. He confessed that he found it to be depressing work because he would hear such sad stories about how people couldn't pay their bills. He even admitted that sometimes he couldn't even muster the courage to ask people for the money they owed.
J. Cole's first thought when meeting Jay-Z was, "Damn, I'm taller than Jay-Z."
For all the hype and effort Cole put into meeting Jay-Z, when he finally did meet Jigga man all he could think was, "Damn, I'm taller than Jay-Z." At 6' 3", Cole is only an inch taller than the 6' 2" Hov.
When doing his first concerts after signing to Roc Nation, J.Cole would drive himself and friends to venues in a Honda Civic.
Fresh off of inking with Roc Nation his transportation was still far from fresh. The fuel economy may have been great, but that's where his bragging points end. Years later, after upgrading from clubs to arenas, we're willing to bet he's got his whip game proper.
There's a video of J. Cole and Wale on YouTube drunkenly performing Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T." at a karaoke bar in
This video is totally worth watching. The first few minutes are clips of Cole performing on stage, but the last few minutes has a drunken Cole and friends doing Michael Jackson karaoke and he's even joined by Wale. The two would collaborate on several tracks, most memorably "Beautiful Bliss" where Cole spit one of his best verses ever.
During the final mastering of 'Cole World: The Sideline Story,' Jay-Z pushed J. Cole's album back a week
For all the hoopla about Cole's relationship with Jay-Z, the two haven't really worked on that much material together. In fact, Jay wasn't even going to be on Cole's album originally. Cole kept holding out for a Jay-Z feature he thought was never going to come. Cole had submitted his album and was already mastering it until Jay was inspired enough to hop on "Mr. Nice Watch."
J. Cole reverted back to writing lyrics into a notepad instead of typing them up for Born Sinner.
Nowadays rappers pride themselves on their lyric writing process. Thumbing bars into your phone has become the norm. Cole powered off and brought paper to pen for Born Sinner, however. Perhaps on his next effort he will take a page out of Hova's book and forego using page or book at all.
Although he reps Fayetteville, J. Cole was actually born in Frankfurt, Germany.
Despite his love for North Carolina, Jermaine was born in the 97th General Hospital on an Army base in Frankfurt, Germany and actually has a German mother. However, at the age of eight months, Cole relocated to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he was raised by his mother, aunt, and cousin. He has said his German mother's decent hasn't benefited him like he hoped, "When you get pulled over by the police, I can't pull out my half-White card." Which is too bad since that's one of the many benefits of being white.
