Album Rating: 1.0 | Sound Off

The J Cole stans are so lame with their constant excuses online. If it wasn't him, he would not be receiving this much grace

“Hard for me to give props to Cole about apologizing to supposedly be the bigger person when he still has those whack trans lines and hasn't held back in the past, like when he beefed with noname”

Yeah he certainly didn’t seem to have an issue with gay/trans bashing over his whole career. If he’s just afraid of getting smoked… well that’s just comedy

He “apologized” because he got called out. Not an apology.

Album Rating: 2.0

Imagine apologizing to someone for participating in a beef they started lol. And yeah, the transphobe bar was wack af. Like, if he’s had lines like that throughout his career that makes me like his art even less. I don’t remember at all cause I hadn’t listened to any of his projects in years before this. Imagine having all the hip hop in the world to listen to and deciding to bump J Cole over anything else.

Listened through DAMN. Today, fantastic album start to back. The time, effort and thought was put into every second. Blows me away artists are dropping pure mid and able to put themselves in the same tier.

Album Rating: 0.5

If I go a decent stretch of time without listening to either of them, I can sorta squint and see why maybe someone would slot J Cole a tier below Kendrick, but going back and actually listening to Kendrick makes that idea so laughable. Kendrick's worst runs laps around Cole's best. Not even close.

bro it’s the people that actually think he’s better that gets me. My friend will shit on Kendrick all day but bump Cole

like my brother in Christ, did your fuckin mom drop you on the head when you were a baby? One of these is clearly better than the other

Ofc I haven’t talked to him since this dropped, I’d love to hear his mental gymnastics about this situation.

Album Rating: 0.5

Guys who put Cole at the top need to be studied. Like, I have routinely clowned on Drake's projects here but I think someone thinking he's at the top makes more sense simply because he occupies a different lane by leaning more pop and clearly has the numbers to reflect that. Cole, on the other hand, tries to position himself as this woke lyrical rapper (emphasis on the "tries") to which Kendrick is clearly analogous and just completely dominates him.



I'm not even a Kendrick super fan, but you just really can't deny his greatness. When he gets introspective or deep, he actually comes through with interesting connections and unique storytelling devices. TPAB had so many of them and as a result it's literally the top-rated RYM album of ALL TIME. But Kendrick can get dumb and fun too! Humble, DNA, K95, Silent Hill, Family Ties....the list goes on.



J Cole tries and fails so hard at this with surface level readings (I can't emphasize enough how bad KOD was with its drugs=bad narrative and the unbelievably heavy-handed Kill-Edward thing) and can't nearly get as loose. There's just so clearly a power level discrepancy in an area with the same aims that I don't know how to really break the debate down to a level that Cole stans can comprehend (though that's a pretty dumb group of people because I have seen them still insist that Cole did nothing wrong with the trans lines). It really is just a matter of "Kendrick better" lol

Kendrick >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> J Shit

Anyone that thinks otherwise should never listen to/comment on rap music ever again period.

“Guys who put Cole at the top need to be studied”
also bows down at the feet of fucking xxxtentacion. I took one listen to that shit and the only thing I could think the entire time is “why in the fuck aren’t you just listening to emo?”

It’s literally just bad emo with some rapping tf man

I think when Cole lyrically hits he really hits but he’s never been able to come up with a concept for an album as deep as Kenny and actually go through with it. J Cole rapping gun bars is about as believable as Drake rapping about anything to do with drugs or guns or the streets though. I’d put j Cole over Drake no contest even with this shit show

Album Rating: 1.0

I mean Drake has managed to set the bar incredibly low, but yeah, J Mid is certainly better than him.

"Cole, on the other hand, tries to position himself as this woke lyrical rapper"

lol what???

Drake rapping about the streets is honestly comedy at this point. Dude is the biggest phony rap has ever seen but 21 Savage likes him so hey he must be a gangster right!

go easy on him man getting your start on degrassi… I can’t even finish that joke fuck Drake dude is the biggest fuckin cornball in music

Sad thing is Drake from 2007-2011 put out some my favorite rap music from that era. His first few mixtapes and his first 2 albums are fucking heaters. But it was all downhill from there.

That’s the only of era of Drake I can possibly say is listenable but even then the “sweatpants chilling with no makeup on that’s when you’re the prettiest” shit is some simp shit for real

Lmao I get it. Take Care is honestly one of my fav albums ever.

Makes my skin crawl to say something nice about Drake in the year of our lord 2024 but Take Care and Nothing Was The Same are both minor classics imo, everything since has been near- indescribable levels of awful except some songs off of Views and More Life

Cole has his early mixtapes which are by far his best stuff, I honestly think all of his actual albums are hilariously bad except I liked some of The Off Season