Jermaine Lamarr Cole came out of hibernation on May 4 and announced that he was dropping his 6th studio album titled “The Off-Season” on May 14. This Tweet broke Twitter, getting over 700,00 likes in no time.

The reason this announcement was so huge was because it has been such a long time since he last dropped an album. The last time he dropped an album was April 2018 called “KOD”. He teased us with a few songs in between then releasing a two-pack called “Lewis Street” summer of 2020. 

After this announcement, J.Cole went on a run making sure his album would be hyped up until its release.

On May 6 he decided to release “i n t e r l u d e” a single from “The-Offseason”. Although the song was short being only two minutes long and for over half of it he was talking, it still got the people excited, including me. 

On May 10, Cole decided to release a documentary for The-Offseason to once again get the people looking forward to his album. The documentary was a little over 20 minutes long and featured guests such as 21 Savage. The Documentary showed his thought and writing process for this album.

J Cole stayed in national headlines once again because on May 11th he was on the basketball magazine SLAM announcing that he would be playing professional basketball in Rwanda, Africa. 

On May 12th J Cole announced he was going to be on L.A Leakers, a popular radio station and freestyle for over five minutes. This freestyle got people hype for the album he was dropping later that week.

Finally he dropped the highly anticipated album and I could not be happier.

My brother and I took the car out as soon as the album was released and drove around together listening to the album. I loved everything about the 12 track album.

Cole is known as being a conscious rapper, especially after albums with “KOD” and “4 Your Eyez Only” where by the end of the album there is a story that connects every song. 

This album was a bit different and reminded me of his earlier mixtapes like “Friday Night Lights” and “The Warm-Up”. He wasn’t trying to have an interconnected story or make songs that made you think about what the meaning of life is and how to fix the government. He was simply rapping about many different topics such as his childhood and stories he has had in his life.

My favorite thing about this album were the features from 21 Savage and Lil Baby. It is such a huge contrast from Cole singing–”Terrified, paranoid, I’ll put you over everything to fill the void/And when you’re gone, will I have anything or will I be destroyed? Yeah”–to hearing Lil Baby rapping–“Got my feet up, I paid silly bands to have s*x on the jet.”

 It is two different tones from two very different rappers, but it works so well together due to the fact that both are great rappers but rapping about two very different subjects one is bound to get you to nod your head back and forth or in my instance both rappers.

This was a great album from Cole which sounds a lot like his earlier mixtapes with better production than his more recent thoughtful albums. This may be a case of recency bias but this my favorite album from him since “2014 Forest Hills Drive”. In my opinion it doesn’t have as many hits as “2014 Forest Hills Drive” so lets hope his next studio album “The Fall-Off” does.