Exploration 6 by Christian Doss

One artist that has always inspired me has been Jermaine Cole better known has J. Cole. I first started hearing about J. Cole around his born sinner album which I still play a few songs from today such as, "Let Nas Down" "Chaining Day' and "Born Sinner" but I really started get into J. Cole when he dropped his 2014 Forest Hills Dr. album. That album is still one of my favorite albums ever made. After this album I started listening to a lot of his older songs from one of his oldest albums Cole World: The Sideline Story. Why J.Cole inspires me is because in his songs he talks a lot about oppression and life living in the ghetto. I am inspired by this because a lot of his lyrics correlate with my values and beliefs. My favorite album and probably my favorite album of all time that J. Cole released was his KOD album. This album features the songs “1985” which he talks about young rappers rapping about materialistic things and how it would be better if they worry about the things that matter in life, but he does not blame them because he once placed his values on materialistic things as well. Another song “Bridges” is about how we pay taxes on the money we work hard to earn and the government takes a cut of it. J. Cole also goes on to talk about how taxes is supposed to build road, and help pay for schools but yet the inner city kids are having a hard time graduating. Lastly he goes on to talk about how we pay taxes but don’t have a say in where the money we pay goes and how politicians are influenced by large coraporations such as the NRA.

J. Cole’s cover art for his KOD album

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