Undead This Time

I think I wanted to hate this album, and I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe the long wait, maybe to challenge the boisterous “magnum opus” label I knew he set out to achieve, maybe to reprimand him for Might Delete Later and subsequent actual deletion (not to mention the questionable trans bars in Pi???)

I saw the long 1h41min run time as overworking and under editing, and I viewed the first several tracks as run of the mill, both in production and lyricism. It isn’t terrible, but it’s exactly his sound. There is no magnum opus, just standard, agreeable, occasionally-cornball J. Cole we expect.

For the most part, I stand by this opinion. However, I may have written him off too early. As I listened through the first tracks of ‘Disc 39’ (how these numbers were decided, I don’t know. I could do some research) I started to feel more of the music. Maybe it was the backdrop of sunshine and my trusty dab pen, or maybe the lively instrumentation and genre experimentation really started to get to me.

I found the features from Erykah Badu and Petey Pablo to be much more fun and substantial compared to Future’s influence on Disc 29, but he started sounding a little The Big Day when talking about his wife. He spent a lot of time telling us about returning home, the world on his shoulders, and what it means for a man to carry his successes and failures. There was some comfort in the familiar storyteller mode J. Cole likes to fall into. But that’s the problem, familiarity. He did exactly what I expected him to and for that reason I’m unmoved.