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You know the game well enough to coast, though you’re stable enough to take chances. Five albums deep, it’s hard to surprise people. A husband and father of two, at 36, he’s learning when to rush and when to throttle, balancing a never-ending quest to make better music with a desire to kick back and enjoy prosperity.
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Cole’s career thus far, appearances on Dreamville Records’ impressive 2019 Revenge of the Dreamers III comp and singles like 21 Savage’s “A Lot” and Young Thug’s “London” notwithstanding. The three-year stretch between KOD and this spring’s The Off-Season marks the longest break between albums in J. He refined his craft admirably on 2016’s 4 Your Eyez Only and 2018’s KOD. He adapted ( albeit slowly and not without lapses) to criticism of his less-than-enlightened stances. He modeled himself after his ’90s hip-hop heroes but kept tabs on the new school, positioning himself as an intermediary figure, a rapper young enough to have the ear of a new generation of fans but old enough to revere the classics and challenge the motivations of younger peers. He built and nurtured a base while working out the kinks in his sound. He dropped a new project almost every year between 20 and stayed on the road, touring The Warm Up, Friday Night Lights, Cole World: The Sideline Story, Truly Yours, Born Sinner, Revenge of the Dreamers, and 2014 Forest Hills Drive with the likes of Jay-Z, Rihanna, Wale, Big K.R.I.T., Drake, and Eminem. Cole, then a mixtape artist gaining attention for his increasingly fluid lyricism and his growing knack for working samples, blew up through sheer persistence.
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You crash and burn as you learn your limits and tolerances, strengths and weaknesses, and then you figure out how to cruise. You run yourself ragged creating something meaningful - a career, a body of work, a family, a worldview - and then you spend the rest of your life cultivating and defending it. It’s the difference between fighting for survival and playing for longevity. Your 30s are a different game than your 20s. What comes after the dream, though, is tedium, maintenance.
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We’ve come full circle and realized the dream.