30 Second Reviews: First Impressions of J. Cole's "Born Sinner"

Yesterday, in a not-so-faint echo of Kanye West's premiere of "New Slaves" as projections on buildings across the world, J. Cole combined technology, geolocation, marketing synergy, and news-cycle hype to premiere his sophomore album Born Sinner.

We downloaded the app, appeared at the required location, watched Important People walk by us in line, and ultimately made it inside a theater. We then traded our drivers' licenses for a pair of headphones from a Major Headphone Brand, struggled to figure out how to connect our apps to the streaming music, then listened as a loop of RJD2's "Ghostwriter" played and the event began. It started late, which was good, because it took awhile for people to fumble through the app installation process.

Then J. Cole himself hit the stage, and told a story about trying to create a hit, which occurred to him as being a necessary ingredient to being a successful rapper fairly late in the process of becoming a successful rapper. He described, in a long but endearing way, the exact same story he would tell more concisely in song form forty minutes later, on his song "Let Nas Down."

Then, mercifully, we listened to the album. What follows is a chronicle of that first listening, a snap reaction to the tracks we heard on J. Cole's Born Sinner.

Written by David Drake (@somanyshrimp)

This song kicks of with a very literal statement of purpose: “It’s way darker this time.” The entire album does have a dark, almost angry feel, although it is hardly cynical. “Villuminati” is a lyrically-dense, purposeful track. It kicks into a beat that sounds like lost ‘03-era Timbaland song, with its particular use of percussion and the way strings are overlaid. In keeping with a theme that comes up throughout this tape, he’ll make a meta reference to his own influences at various moments (in this case: “Timberlake produced by Timbaland on that goddamn FutureSex/LoveSounds was playing in my mind...”)

J. Cole drops some weird homophobic/self-aware anti-homophobic lines that sound very much of our time: aware that it’s a thing he should be concerned about, but not quite sure how to handle it. “Sometimes I brag like Hov,” he says alongside a sample of Biggie saying “born sinner” from “Juicy.” And that is a frequent thing, as it has been throughout Cole’s career; his rap nerdery is part of the text. “Rap nerd, even copped Rah Digga.” Damn! Rah Digga was kind of dope though.

This song flips OutKast’s “Art of Storytelling” beat, and it’s not even a diss to J. Cole to suggest that it isn’t really as good. That said, the chorus is hooky, and in an era where we let Mac Miller and a Disney starlet get away with remaking “Still Not a Player,” the jacking of classics doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

The song’s first two verses are cocky, assertive: “Get my dick wet but I never let it soak there.” “Country boy in the city, in New York nine years, ran that shit like Diddy/Ridin’ through south side Queens like 50.” Later on, the first reference on the album about not getting a magazine cover. The hook suggests the narrator is being a hubristic: “She said 'You about to miss church,' while she riding me/I like my Sundays with a cherry on top, make that ass drop.” Then, in the final verse, his cockiness is suddenly undercut completely, when he runs into a girl he had hit-and-quit in college. The song ends with her telling him he isn’t worth shit, as if he’s forced to acknowledge his selfishness. Think of it as a rap version of Junot Diaz’s This is How You Lose Her.

The church vibes are heavy on this one, as the song opens with a big gospel chorus. This religious context weaves in and out of Cole’s record, and informs his moral worldview. A few opening lines that sort of capture Cole’s general approach to rap: “God flow/Paint a picture like a young Pablo/Picasso, Niggas saying live fast, die young so I drive slow/And pray I die old.” The subversive rap nerdery of idolizing a different Pablo than his rap heroes did, of being the conscientious artist who plans for the future, rather than an action hero-styled rap star, is his lane. But it’s not a new lane. This is Kanye and “Jesus Walks,” the conflicted artist pulled by religion and temptation. But "Trouble" is no "Jesus Walks," and so feels more like signifying for an audience, marketing, more than anything else.

The first verse is about thirsty female fans, and falls back on bitches vs. sisters cliche. “I could write a book called Things Hoes Say,” Cole says. (I’m sure they could write quite a book as well.) The second verse is some kind of fantasy about going back to school and imagining what it would be like to go back to school to get laid. To this point, it’s probably the weakest track here.

Despite having the same name as one of the best, most iconic songs of the century, this doesn’t sound much like Kanye's “Runaway” at all. But that's not to knock it. Production-wise, this is a beautiful song, as melodies seem to drape over every frequency on the track, synthesizers and guitars reverberating throughout, and Cole’s sung chorus works surprisingly well. Where “Trouble” felt one-dimensional or borderline-lazy, his writing on “Runaway” feels impassioned and true. He likes to wrestle with the conflict between commitment and freedom: “Acting out my childhood fantasies of wife and home/But there’s a whole lot of actresses I’d like to bone.”

Written out, that line sounds kind of corny, but one of the things that works so well (particularly when the production is on point) is that his humbleness, his willingness to make himself vulnerable, makes criticizing him for not being sufficiently guarded or cool seem like epic point-missing. This track also has some lyrical references to a darker outlook than on his debut: “In this life ain’t no happy endings.”

The subject matter here—the class conflict attendant to rap music's ever-growing popular appeal—is going to make for some interesting discussions in the next few years. Over lush, melodic production (is that a harp sample?) that sounds like light rain on a spring day, Cole considers some significant philosophical questions (“How much for your soul?”) about how money affects art and life more broadly.

It starts off at the bottom: “Here’s a song you can sing along with/When you’re down, on some let-you-know-you-ain’t-alone shit/When your mama ain’t at home because she got a second job.” It’s about class jealousy, and confusion about the hip-hop materialist bent. (Not exactly a new sentiment, but well-articulated here.) “It’s like Sony signed Basquiat/He gave it all he got/And now the nigga don’t paint the same.”

It’s a crying shame that Kendrick Lamar only grabs the chorus on this. And the line—“Forbidden fruit, watch out for the Adam’s Apple"—is corny. But otherwise, this song is a pretty great take on A Tribe Called Quest's “Electric Relaxation” sample. (After Chance the Rapper’s tape from earlier this year, flipping Midnight Marauders beats is one song away from being a trend piece).

Obviously recorded fairly recently, because Cole mentions dropping his album the same day as Kanye, and featuring more upbeat production than most of the rest of the material, "Forbidden Fruit" all about the punch lines: “Daddy ain’t shit so she raised that nigga kids/But she swallowing mine.” He disses rap mags: “How many records do a nigga gotta sell/Just to get the cover of the XXL/Or Fader?” And closes out the song by joking about making his first ad-lib be the word “Bitch!”

A standout album track on this record, “Chaining Day” is about self-loathing rappers: “You mix greed, pain, and fame, this the heinous result.” Another spring-day beat accompanies the rapper’s reflections: “My guilt heavy as this piece I wear/They even iced out Jesus’ hair.” Then more explicitly, “Ice on this white jesus seem a little un-holy.” At the same time, he is defensive about them: “Laugh on white man, I ain’t paid as you/But I bet your rims ain’t the same age as you.” The song ends in a syrupy, slowed jewelry addict sing-song.

This isn’t new terrain; it’s the “Benz and a backpack” Kanye concept, more or less. But he does a nice job with the execution: “So don’t take my chain from me/I chose this slavery.”

This interlude is basically a tribute to late-90s Jay and Timbo, with Cole spitting intricate little rhythms over a vaguely exotic percussion-and-string loop. It’s a welcome uptempo joint on an otherwise-conceptually heavy album, weighty with Important Things To Say.

On that note, it should be mentioned that, production-wise, this record is a major step up from J. Cole's debut; the musicality of it is very enveloping, with a kind of jazz-gospel-funk fusion as its general sound, occasionally spiced up by Timbo-style rhythmic adventurousness added for a dash of flavor.

This song sounds so clearly inspired by Cyhi Da Prynce’s “Woopty Doo”—well, really, it’s inspired by Nas’ “Stay,” which J. Cole covered on his Truly Yours EP earlier this year. But No ID first gave the sample to Cyhi. On “Let Nas Down,” though, it sounds like a live saxophone has replaced the sample of L.A. Carnival’s “Seven Steps to Nowhere.” Imbued with one of the best beats on this album, “Let Nas Down” is possibly the most J.-Cole song J. Cole has ever created—thoughtful, earnest, based on a strangely insubstantial concept. But he makes it work, and likely learned a valuable lesson along the way.

The song is about how he heard second-hand (through No ID) that Nas wasn't feeling his attempt at a crossover single. Rappers hating on labels for their “formulaic, archaic” way of putting together songs is a long-running theme since the days of “record industry rule #4080.” (Never mind that that particular industry rule was likely coined in response to a label saving Tribe’s career by forcing them to replace a virulently homophobic song with “Show Business.”) It's surprising how recently Cole came to understand that making hits was a part of his job. "They don't know, they just study the charts," he says, as if this very complaint had not been lodged a million times before. "Me, I study the shows, the fans, study they hearts." Also, consciously or not, Cole has become quite an impressive singles artist, give or take a “Work Out.”

Another funny thing about this song is that it’s not like Nas has displayed such a talent picking beats throughout his career, either. Sure, Cole's choice for "Work Out” might have been weak, but Nas has let his fans down with clunkers numerous times—from "Street Dreams" to “Summer On Smash.” Cole even notes his hero's failure in this regard. "You made 'You Owe Me,'" he raps, "I thought you could relate..." But whatever: that’s not really what this song is about. It’s about Cole being a relatable guy who is more like us than he is like his heroes, a nice guy who made good and now gets to interact with the pantheon on our behalf. The fact that Nas was even listening to him in the first place isn’t mentioned in arrogance, but with a charmingly humble sense of, “Can you believe this?”

With skittering snares, noodling keyboards and synthesizers and general jazz-fusion feel, this is the archetypal Born Sinner song, appropriate for the title track. Cole raps about personal relationships, family, male-female relations, etc., thematic depth well-served by the gospel-clap coda that closes the record. And James Fauntleroy (one of Justin Timberlake's production partners) needs more gigs as a hook singer, as soon as possible.

On the whole, upon first listen, Born Sinner is a consistent album, and a well-conceived one. Cole haters—those who find him boring or conservative—will probably not be converted. But he’s such a humble, uncool guy relative to similar Kanye-diaspora artists like Drake, that it’s hard to feel any kind of dislike of the dude. He’s sincere, confident, and has developed a strong catalog through earnest openness. It remains a mystery to this writer why so many consider him a great lyricist; his strengths seem more in musicality, his likeability, and his ability to communicate in clean prose, rather than poetic. But it’s hard to deny he’s made perhaps his strongest record here.