J.Cole first mentioned “The Fall Off’ in 2018, on his album “KOD,” when he named the outro of the project “1985(Intro to the Fall Off).”
In the song, he speaks from the position of an elder statesman in hip-hop and advises the new generation of rappers, specifically Lil Pump, to save their money, invest in property and prepare for their inevitable fall from grace.
Over the past eight years, Cole has teased the project’s release through songs, interviews and documentaries. The album would be his final gift to rap, his magnum opus, his “Reasonable Doubt.”
After nearly a decade of anticipation, Cole finally released “The Fall Off” on Friday, and it was met with largely negative reviews. Skeptics claimed that the project was boring, lacked direction and wasn’t worth the wait.
In my first attempt to listen, I tended to agree. The bars were fire — that’s a given on any J. Cole Abum — but I felt it lacked a consistent theme, and the songs dragged for entirely too long. It appeared that he’d taken the idea of “The Fall Off” too literally.
In his efforts to produce his greatest work yet, he’d unintentionally created his worst listening experience since “KOD”.
I now know that writing him off that early was ignorant and reactionary. I tend to believe the human brain struggles to digest a two-hour rap album at 11 p.m. after one listen, especially after a full day of classes and editing articles all night.
When I finally sat down and gave Cole a fair shake, I chastised myself for ever questioning his brilliance.
Disc 29
The project has two sides — “Disc 29” and”Disc 39”, which symbolize his perspective in life at the ages of 29 and 39.
Disc 29 is an introspective piece that details his struggles growing up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which he frequently refers to as “Fayattenam,” a term for the crime-ridden area where Cole became a man.
Throughout the first 12 songs of the album, he details his experiences living in poverty and the symptoms — drugs, violence, death and jail — that stem from growing up in such an adverse environment.
By the time Cole is 29, he’s experienced all of this and understands the PTSD that the streets can give you, and it makes him start to lose touch with his roots.
On “Safety,” he raps from the perspective of an old friend who went to jail, trying to reach out and catch up, and tells Cole he’s proud of him for all he’s accomplished. Cole isn’t answering, so he’s essentially leaving voicemails, filling Cole in on how drugs and violence have ravaged the community, how the women they used to want are doing and how much he’s missed in his hometown.
This conflict is present throughout the first disc: Cole realizes how bad things have gotten, and wants to help, but throughout his childhood, his dream was to make it and become the celebrity he is in 2014. So, what sense does it make to go back?
He finds creative ways to explore this juxtaposition, and he does so masterfully on “Drum ‘ N ‘ Bass.” In the second verse, He raps, “Tell me what sense does it make, comin’ back when you escaped? As quiet as it’s kept, I feel the vibe of the whole city is tired and stressed from getting fed this steady diet of death.”
Verse three expands on the internal struggle of making it out, accomplishing your goals and wanting to help, but the life you build creates a sort of blindness.
He raps, “And while I feel powerless to change the power that is, a part of me is yelling loud as shit, you ain’t tryin’ your best’. Too busy selling our arenas and flying on jets. Life on cloud nine, and I can’t deny it, I guess. Living my dream, my life is my childhood wish. The guilt that comes along with that is the size of the planet. I hope I get to see it across the Atlantic.”
This theme is present throughout the first seven songs of the project, making appearances on “Poor Thang”, “Run a train”, “Two Six” and “Who TF IZ YOU”, but he keeps it fresh by using different rhyme patterns, flows, features and storytelling.
Towards the end of Disc 29, you can feel the mood shift. It’s like he’s aging through his music as he comes closer to 39. He’s sort of moving away from looking back into his past and looking towards “The Fall Off”.
On “Bombs in Ville / Hit the Gas”, he spends the last minute on how he’s gotten older and wishes he could FaceTime his younger self and tell him that even though things were hard growing up, he did things the right way. He then tells his younger self that he’s calling from a point in which he’d already fallen off and been disposed of by the rap game, though that’s the natural order of things.
He finishes off his coming-of-age story with “Lonely at the Top”, a song in which he raps about finally making it to the top of the rap game, but all of the people he looked up to have disappeared or lost their passion for music. He uses imagery and an extended metaphor about being an only child who was whose mother didn’t allow him to play with the bigger kids.
By the time he’s of age and allowed to play at the park, the slides are vacant, signaling his heroes have fallen off.
Disc 39
On Disc 39, he feels wiser, as if he has learned from the mistakes he made in early adulthood, such as taking good women for granted and being too materialistic, which are both symptoms of becoming famous.
“Life Sentence” is a direct response to “Legacy” from Disc 29, where he learns that being with a woman forever is a thing he can do, and a life sentence in this aspect isn’t a punishment, but a privilege.
As he’s aged, he seems to have become more confident in who he is. The Bravado is there, and he’s seemingly figured out how to balance reaping the rewards of his celebrity with going back to Fayetteville.
In the first verse of “Old Dog”, he raps, “I’m back home for the time being, C-O-L-E state of N.C., that’s where you find me in.” Later, he continues to show this change in energy, saying, “Of Carolina, bear in mind, we never had shit. But now the GOAT is from this B**ch, so that’s all past tense.”
Towards the end of Disc 39, he appears again as that elder statesman, almost as a call back to his first mention of “The Fall Off” on “KOD”. Though on “I love her again”, he pushes his level of artistry to its limits. Cole performs an interpolation of Common’s “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” and the “her” is the rap game. Cole blends storytelling and symbolism to tell the story of how he fell in love with rap even tho she cheated on him with other people. At some point, she transforms from something pure into something commercialized, money-hungry, and watered down.
She’d begun to lose her value in Cole’s eyes. By the end of the song, he realizes rap was bound to change and it’s not his to possess.
I think this realization ties the album together.
“The Fall Off” isn’t about his lyrical decline, nor his relevance in the rap game. The project is on pace to sell more than 300,000 copies in its first week.
“The Fall Off” is about acceptance.
It’s about embracing the fact that time moves forward and fame will fade. Disc 29 is about Cole’s struggles with guilt, trauma and survivor’s remorse. As exemplified in Disc 39, he responds to this strife in his life with a wisdom and perspective that can only come with age.
One side is driven by the anxiety of losing touch with the place that made him who he is; the other is grounded in the understanding that you can return home without becoming trapped by it.
One side fears falling off; the other recognizes that falling off is simply another phase of life.
What makes the project an enjoyable experience is living within that tension.
Could it be perceived as boring? Sure. It is too long, has some skips and Cole’s singing is pretty bad? Absolutely.
But if it’s truly Cole’s final chapter, I don’t think it’s a fall from grace, just one last reminder of his excellence.
