J. Cole Goes x2 Platinum With Zero Guest Artists

In December 2014 North Carolina rapper J. Cole dropped his third official studio album 2014 Forest Hills Drive. The album was dropped with no promo or singles released prior and not much word from Cole himself.  It was a very quiet album release as opposed to what most artists do these days. The strategy was a risky one as it could have easily backfired regardless of how well-respected the artist is. To top it all off the album has no featured artist, meaning it’s about an hour of just J. Cole doing his thing over beats.

Who would have guessed that taking such an unorthodox approach would result in J. Cole making a huge mark in rap? The album has now sold more than 2 million copies making it double platinum. No other rap album has achieved that feat in the past 25 years. To add to this Cole, who’s also a gifted producer, produced or co-produced 10 of the 13 tracks on the album. In an age where many artists never make it to gold let alone achieve platinum record sales, Cole has done something amazing and quite unexpected. I’m sure as an artist and producer he must be extremely proud to see an album which is clearly his vision, not one put together to please the masses or his bosses at Roc Nation, attain so much success.

The album attained platinum status last September and was nominated for multiple awards including the 2015 BET Hip Hop Award for Album of the Year award, which it won and the 2016 Grammy award for Best Rap Album, which it lost to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. A live version of the album was released in January this year.

Cole announced to fans a couple of weeks ago that he’s not going perform another live show “for a very long time” which upset a lot of fans. But it does leave you wondering whether his hiatus from the stage has been orchestrated so as to give him time to work on a new album. If there’s one thing Cole has done very well thus far it’s to ration himself out to the fans. New music from the artist doesn’t come out every single day unlike the case with many contemporary artists. So when he does finally release something it feels special.

We’ve watched Cole evolve from Cole World to Born Sinner and finally his magnum opus thus far 2014 Forest Hills Drive all of which are significantly different albums. I have no idea what he will bring us next but I for one am patiently waiting for his next project to drop.