J.Cole - Cole World : The Sideline Story Album Review by T33SSIDE86

I, like many have been anticipating the debut
studio album of Jermaine Cole for over a year now, since I first started
listening to him in the Summer of 2010, I remember I was in a Las Vegas hotel
room with two good friends and the video for Who Dat came on the television. I
was impressed, and made a point downloading his entire catalogue. And what a
collection of music it is. Cole World is an appropriate title. A lot of his
material is cold, and cuts deep, and pulls on emotions we all go through. 
The album is consistent in its subject matter,
with soulful, yet new edge production and combined with complex 2 and 3 bar
rhyme structures from Cole, which comes across as so effortless. His story
telling ability is quite impressive; he makes the listener feel like they're in
the room with him on the end of a conversation. One minute he uses references
to people and quotes them, then retorts back to his own response, using the
chorus to sum up the circumstances in each tale. Songs like Daddy’s Little Girl
and Lost Ones are perfect examples of Cole style. I love this. It makes me
listen and listen over and over.
The inclusion of some of Cole’s songs from his
mix tapes such as the come up, the warm up and Friday night lights keeps the
raw element at the core at what he tries to do. He's too raw for the charts,
but to classy for the underground. Cole has created a nice middle ground. And
he is the main occupant. At 26, he has a lot of stories to tell, about his
childhood, in Never Told, his love life, in Lights Please, and his rise to fame
in Rise and Shine.  The album is a culmination of years of intense work on
mix tapes and the gig circuit, and is a clear affirmation that he is going to
be a fixture in hip hop for a long time to come.
Rating 3/5