On December 9th, 2016, American rapper J. Cole released his fourth studio album, "4 Your Eyez Only." The album was a solid piece of work that was met with generally positive reviews but it echoed one of the main attributes and faults of J. Coles music, the fact that it is very #relatable. And sometimes to a fault. During my first listen I liked what I heard and I felt like it was business as usual until I got to the 7th track of the album, Neighbors. What caught me was not that the track was a departure sonically from what I had heard from Cole's catalogue, but because there was something starkly different about it from pretty much anything else I had heard from his work prior. It was and is, in my opinion, J. Cole's least relatable track.
The song itself is a very simple song. The beat is very stark and without much ornamentation (the story of how he made it is pretty cool), the hook is very plain and the lyrics aren't full of double entendres or braggadocio but thesis of the song, which is inspired by true events, is where the magic lies. That statement being, MY HOUSE IS SO BIG THAT MY NEIGHBORS THINK I'M PABLO ESCOBAR REBORN. For those who don't know the story, J. Cole's mansion in North Carolina was once raided by SWAT after his neighbors believed him to be some kind of drug kingpin. This is not very relatable. Not even in the slightest. Much of Cole's work has mainly revolved around the plight of poor people, loving your life despite struggle, with the occasional party track here and club banger there, but with the ultimate desire to tell stories that connect. What made Neighbors such a stand out track was not that he did not desire to tell us our stories, but he told us his. The story of a mega successful rapper and how even in a world where millions know his name, can still feel so small and two sets of lyrics expertly paint the picture of what it means to be Jermaine Cole, international superstar.
"I been building me a house back home in the south ma, wont believe what it's costing. And its fit for a king right or a n*gga that can sing and explain all the pain that it cost him."
"Somethings you cant escape, death, taxes and a racist society that make every n*gga feel like a candidate, for a Trayvon kind of fate."
"I been building me a house back home in the south ma, wont believe what it's costing. And its fit for a king right or a n*gga that can sing and explain all the pain that it cost him."
"Somethings you cant escape, death, taxes and a racist society that make every n*gga feel like a candidate, for a Trayvon kind of fate."
The song isn't revolutionary. It doesn't want to be. It doesn't give us a hook we can chant in moments of pain or inspire some great cause. All it says is, "The neighbors think I'm selling dope." In other words, its just honest. It plays out more like a journal entry with an instrumental than political statement about race relations in America. And with that Cole connects in a way that I feel he hasnt been able to in the past because he trades out being #relatable with being real.
So why does this matter? In my journey to create art that I want people to consume and feel, I struggle with trying to be relatable. I don't want to be obscure. I want to people, and a whole lot of them, to see what I make and to feel some personal connection to it and I lie to myself by saying that the only way to achieve this is to force feed them their own stories. I want to be everything to everyone but the reality is I can't. You can't. By all means you if make art or create anything you must make art or create for people that aren't you and tell stories that aren't only exclusive to you and people like you but remember.. You aren't them and they aren't you. I don't know what it means to be J. Cole and J. Cole doesn't know what it means to be me but because of the unrelatable honesty of tracks like Neighbors, I see a tiny but important glimpse into the world of J. Cole.