J. Cole celebrated his 31st birthday on Thursday (Jan. 28) with a special Forest Hills Drive Live album, a set taken from his recent nationwide trek and HBO special. While the Fayetteville MC has been treating stages like his stoop across the country in support of his third No. 1 album 2014 Forest Hills Drive, he's also gotten married and leading the charge at Dreamville Records. Kendrick and Cole are in a place in their careers and in their lives where they have to keep going. Of course they’re two of the biggest rappers out, but they still have to keep grinding. There’s so much work that they have to continue to do. While Lamar was open to the idea in a Hot 97 interview last March, Free says that genius takes time. Kendrick Lamar & J. Cole Trade Instrumentals For a Pair of 'Black Friday' Freestyles. A joint album does sound great, but people need to understand, these are two geniuses," he added. These are two creative guys. It takes a long time for one of them to get in a space to create a song, so to get two of them in a space to do that, it takes a lot of time and energy. It all has to be a singular project, but it just can’t happen overnight. . Cole sat atop the faux roof of 2014 Forest Hills Drive–the childhood home he named his 3rd studio album after–at Madison Square Garden in New York City last night, he began to tell a story many rappers tell when they’ve “made it big,” often signified by achieving something as momentous as selling out MSG after releasing an album with no pop records. However, this story was different from the one say, Jay Z might tell, or Kanye West, or Nicki Minaj. J. Cole, along with Drake, Kid Cudi, and a handful of others, make up a small crop of superstars whose meager beginnings lived on the internet. When Kanye West refers to when he was pumping out “5 beats a day for 3 summers,” we have nothing but our imagination to rely on when attempting to conjure an image of a 24-year old Kanye West, huddled over a small desk in Newark, matching synths with samples. However, there are pictures of Drake and 40 dressed in cringeworthy outfits on Facebook and Myspace, dated 2008 or 2009. Every once in a while, someone digs far back enough to share a tweet J. Cole sent out 6 years ago, celebrating his 502nd. follower. He now has in excess of 7 million Kendrick’s always working. He’s never not working. He’s always thinking of the next idea, writing down ideas or mumbling shit to himself…It’s too early to say right now.
J.Cole and Kendrick Lamar nennew