Cole's fifth album, KOD (2018), became his fifth number-one album on the Billboard 200 and featured a then-record six simultaneous top 20 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, tying The Beatles. His jazz influenced fourth album, 4 Your Eyez Only (2016), debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. Moving into more conscious themes, 2014 Forest Hills Drive (2014) topped the Billboard 200 and earned Cole a Best Rap Album nomination at the 2015 Grammy Awards.

His next album, Born Sinner (2013), also topped the Billboard 200. It debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200. Intent on further pursuing a musical career, he went on to release two additional mixtapes, The Warm Up (2009) and Friday Night Lights (2010) both to critical acclaim, after signing to Jay-Z's Roc Nation imprint in 2009.Ĭole released his debut studio album, Cole World: The Sideline Story, in 2011. Born on a military base in Germany and raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Cole initially gained recognition as a rapper following the release of his debut mixtape, The Come Up, in early 2007. Cole is regarded as one of the most influential rappers of his generation. Despite the gravity of his subjects (and his sobering delivery), Cole-like his occasional collaborator Kendrick Lamar-is the rare artist who's managed to reconcile the conscious with the commercial, balancing his conceptual side with giant singles like “Work Out,” “Deja Vu,” and “ATM.Jermaine Lamarr Cole (born January 28, 1985) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer. Cole’s since gone on to release a string of ambitious, increasingly confident albums, often meditating on single subjects at length: 2018’s KOD, for example, offered a sustained look at addiction, while several songs on 2016’s 4 Your Eyez Only were written from the perspective of a friend killed in his early twenties after leaving the drug game-a composite of people Cole knew from childhood.

Jay dismissed him initially, but circled back a year or so later on the strength of Cole’s mixtapes, making him the first signee to the Roc Nation label. John’s University, graduating magna cum laude while making beats on the side, at one point waiting outside JAY-Z’s studio for three hours to give him a CD. A North Carolina native (born in Frankfurt, West Germany, in 1985), Cole moved to New York City on scholarship to St. He takes on capital-T topics with an earnestness-and moral imperative-that most rappers seem to avoid. Cole emerged in the 2010s as a kind of torchbearer for serious hip-hop. Raised on 2Pac, Biggie, Nas, and JAY-Z, J.

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