J. Cole showing what I love most about hip-hop

If your favorite artist can’t sit and break down their songs like J. Cole does on the (name show) then I can’t put them up there with Cole, Kendrick, and other great lyricists like Black Thought, Lupe Fiasco, and others.

I’m not suggesting my criteria for great hip-hop is right—I’m just sharing what I prefer.

There are times when I’d choose songs with less depth and complexity, but if you ask me who my favorite artists are and why I consider them to be great, lyrics will always be at the top of my list.

Check out these two short episodes where J. Cole breaks down two of his songs off his latest album, The Fall Off, Who TF IZ U and The Fall Off Is Inevitable.

To me, The Fall Off Is Inevitable is way more impressive because the storyline he raps about is his life in reverse. That may not sound like a big deal, but try to tell your life story up to this point in reverse so that the flow from life event to life event flows, even though it’s in reverse.

It takes effort to listen to the song, and I can’t imagine how difficult it is to actually perform it since our minds naturally want to go in chronological order from oldest to newest.

If you only watch one of these, check out the Part 2 video.

One of my friends (wuddup Nas) and I often go back and forth in a winless debate about Drake, J. Cole, and Kendrick Lamar.

Drake has the numbers and is a talented artist, performer, and businessman. But his pen is nowhere near Cole's or Kendrick's. And Cole does most of his own production and has even produced some of my favorite songs by other artists. I personally value the pen over the numbers when determining who I think is the best—I understand why most fall back on numbers.

Not all hip-hop needs to be at this level, but I will always appreciate the artists who take their craft to this next level.

Keep pursuing,

JC