When J. Cole released his latest musical offering, The Off-Season, on May 14, 2021, I knew I wasn’t going to love it. And as most self-fulfilling prophecies work, I didn’t. I maintained my similar stance of being bored with most of Cole’s music. But like any curiously dapper chap in the roaring 2020's, I do realize that an entire generation younger than me absolutely loves this dude and I wanted to know why. So I did what any soul with nephews who are into hip-hop would do...I called my nephew, Xavier to come on my podcast to talk about his love for J. Cole.
Xavier, who I wrote about a few years ago while he was in the throes of trying to figure out where he was going to college, is about to complete his freshman year at Tuskegee University, the famous and historic historically Black college in Tuskegee, Ala. When I wrote about him, Morehouse College and the University of Alabama were the options, and well, things changed. He got a full ride to ‘Skegee and here we are. And he is an absolute J. Cole fan. He has him as his favorite rapper and “gets it” when it comes to Cole. When I asked him to be on my podcast to have this inter-generational convo he said “of course,” and then suggested his homie, Emgra Busambwa—who is also a Cole fan, though Kanye is his favorite artist—join and we ended up having a convo about hip-hop from the young folks standpoint.
We chopped it up about Cole, The Off-Season, rappers like Lil Baby and then they gave me some musical Blackamendations to check out.
So check out this latest episode. I’ll have to get my nephew back on again to discuss more of our musical differences and similarities. That was fun. And always, this podcast is Blacktastic.
Thanks, Obama.