Aight I listened to the album a couple more times.
It’s not a bad album at all. Here’s the songs I like:
Safety
Run A Train
Poor Thang
Bunce Road Blues
Drum n Bass
The Let Out
Hit The Gas
The Fall Off is Inevitable
Quik Stop
And the whole world is the Ville
My issue with some of these songs like bunce road blues and hit the gas is that they are a hodgepodge of ideas instead of a cohesive song. Like…what the fuck are these songs about for real. On the Future & Tems song, he talking about riding thru the old neighborhood and what not, but the song ends with Tems talking about relationship woes…it’s like 2 different songs. Same with Hit The Gas, which is already 2 different songs but again, this part of the song talks about running into an old flame and smoking with her, then ends with him calling himself using a time-traveling iPhone to show his younger self his kids. Nigga what.
And I like these songs. But it’s like…what
But yeah, overall, decent album. I wish this concept was done better without sounding as redundant as it did (Legacy, Life Sentence and Only You are all different versions of the same song to me). Not to mention that, it kinda feels like he’s spent his whole career telling us about Fayetteville, so it doesn’t feel like any new ground was broken here. Like I said in a previous post, his flows are better than they’ve ever been but the subject matter holds him back, unfortunately. Also, I feel like Poor Thang would have been so dope if he DID use that track to diss Kendrick and instead, he apologized and used the track to address a nameless local rapper….which to me is a big fuckin waste of his time and makes him look kinda crazy, all things considered.
But yeah, 3.5 mic album overall. I think someone else in here made a great point in that J Cole is a great rapper that doesn’t make great albums. Hate to say it but they are right.
Ps. I hope nobody else ever makes a “I used to love her” type track ever again. Please stop
