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   Grading J. Cole’s Comeback Tracks
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   In Cole Blood.
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                  <p style="margin:0">
                   Cynics and casual fans probably believed this day would never come, but J. Cole’s
                   <em>
                    The Fall-Off
                   </em>
                   , an album he first started teasing in 2018—nearly eight years ago now, the same year A$AP Rocky last released a full-length project—is (finally) almost here. And to herald its arrival and satiate a long-starving, barely patient fanbase, Cole dropped a four-pack of freestyles on Tuesday January 27, one day before his 41st birthday and about a week-and-a-half before
                   <em>
                    Fall-Off’s
                   </em>
                   February 6th release date.
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                    <img alt="J.Cole tweet Birthday Blizzard '26. hosted by DJ Clue? 🥶🥶🥶 4 new freestyles available now on //thefalloff.com" height="auto" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fmedia.sailthru.com%252Ffss%252Ffbht11%252Fb302ec96-ec53-4604-8798-0b45143b4260%252FScreenshot%252B2026-01-28%252Bat%252B7.30.18%25E2%2580%25AFPM.png/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZtZWRpYS5zYWlsdCIsInRpbWUiOjE3Njk2OTk1MDEuNzcyMjU4NX0:1vlTgL:j0x1PLHOtg6HbxkGcZibc_HI3xdzBWMCAJrB4U8EzG4" style="display:block;height:auto;border:0;width:100%" title="J.Cole tweet Birthday Blizzard '26. hosted by DJ Clue? 🥶🥶🥶 4 new freestyles available now on //thefalloff.com" width="560"/>
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                  <p style="margin:0">
                   It’s been a quiet rollout so far—perhaps
                   <em>
                    too
                   </em>
                   quiet for a decade-in-the-making album that Cole himself is hyping up as the most important (and maybe the last) of his career. He announced the release date with a pretty typical Rich Guy Everyman
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    trailer
                   </a>
                   showing him self-washing his Lamborghini Urus and eating at a diner, and dropped a video for an untitled song that while impressively technically proficient, wouldn’t amount to much more than an album cut had it not been singled out.
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                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   But by rapping over the “Victory,” “Money Power &amp; Respect,” “Can I Live” and “Who Shot Ya” beats—four of the best and most classic beats of all time, both in their original form and as go-to freestyle templates, and as it happens, all Bad Boy beats… not that there’s anything wrong
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    with that
                   </a>
                   —Cole is perhaps making his intentions clear that he’s about to crash the gates and shake this winter and maybe even the rest of the year up.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   So, how’d he do? Again, these beats belong to classic songs from Hall of Fame MCs, and a host of other respected spitters have tried their hand at them since. To kick off the rollout for an album this hyped by flowing over these— complete with throwback DJ Clue mixtape drops peppered throughout—is to invite a special level of scrutiny. So let’s get hyper-scrutinous and rank ‘em.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   <strong>
                    4. “Bronx Zoo Freestyle”
                   </strong>
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   This is the one over “Victory,” and I’m sorry but all it really did was send me back to Lloyd Banks’ titanic
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    G-Unit freestyle
                   </a>
                   from the early aughts, which Puffy would later formalize on a Bad Boy compilation disc in ‘04. That verse has quotables I still mutter to myself while brushing my teeth. Take your pick: “I know the watch bothering your vision/but reach and I put a dot on your head, like it’s part of your religion”; “The vehicles is long enough to stash a streestweeper/Shit could get uglier than the Master P sneaker”; “Every rapper ain’t a star and every plaid ain’t Burberry.”
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   I didn’t get the same rush from Cole, though he does start things off with the run-through-a-wall- ready lines “Living ghetto fab like my brother’s name Paul Cain/Somewhere along the way I hate to say we lost shame/Grown men peddling gossip of all things/I remember when it was rappin and ball playin’/Now the bread and butter is yappin and parlayin.” My blood rose with the Luka Doncic reference and a shot at the rap media podcast ecosystem as Stevie J’s track builds to that familiar operatic crescendo. But just as I was about to hit
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    the Lou Ferrigno
                   </a>
                   , the beat drops and Cole tries to double-time flow over it, and it just doesn’t work. And if I may nitpick: he and Drake are both making
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    the events of 2024
                   </a>
                   a little too foregrounded in their narratives since; consider this a plea to both brothers to stop referencing it quite so much and just focus on great songs and raps.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   <strong>
                    3. “Winter Storm Freestyle”
                   </strong>
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   This is Cole over “Who Shot Ya,” so it’s probably not a coincidence that he uses this beat in service of one of his favorite go-to themes: separating himself, a Real Dude Who’s Seen Rough Things, from the posturing fake thugs and gangsters he says the rap game is most populated with. It’s cool, with casually slick moments like a double entendre about Anthony Edwards being the Second Coming of Jordan and his endless paternal disputes, and a jaw-droppingly brazen reference to Lori Harvey. But at the same time, it feels kind of sleepy. Jaewon, whose dad Jadakiss first teased this mixtape a week ago,
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    compared
                   </a>
                   this drop to rappers promoting their new record by freestyling on Funk Flex’s show back in the day. But that was a rite of passage that the best brought their A-game out for; Cole can write dazzling couplets in his head while he drops his kids off at school and if you told me that’s how he recorded this, I’d believe you.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   <strong>
                    2. “Golden Goose Freestyle”
                   </strong>
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   The toughest beat assignment of the four, in my opinion. An all-time triple-certified classic from
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    The Lox and Black Rob
                   </a>
                   that then years later served as the first pass for an instantly historic
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    Jay-Z freestyle
                   </a>
                   at Funk Flex— “I’m coming in for 700%!”—back when he was still “retired” but wanted to show that he was hardly “gettin’ soft,” as Flex put it. (That verse would later be crystallized on wax as “Dear Summer” over a shimmering Just Blaze beat, but real heads know the “Can I Live Hot97 Freestyle” is its superior form.)
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   It’s a long shadow, but Cole acquits himself pretty nicely, talking a lot of cash shit in his casual-not-cocky manner that has the timeline divided on if he’s just getting competitive bars off or actually subbing one of his would-be Big 3 co-members. Wouldn’t it be counterproductive and disingenuous of Cole to turn around and sub Kendrick after…all that? He bigged up Drake when the dust cleared, but have he and Iceman since fallen out? How else are we supposed to take bars that mention Lucien Grainge, ghostwriting and the pointed use of “dog” from a guy who brags about how intentional his writing is? We’ll see if this takes any turns on the album proper.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   <strong>
                    1. “99 Build Freestyle”
                   </strong>
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   This is over “Money, Power &amp; Respect” and it’s the most locked in and energetic Cole sounds across all four. “The beef ain’t real, so it ain’t no reason to squash it/the game ain’t either, so it’s easy for me to pause it/with one verse, I disassemble narratives.” There’s a crazy set of internal rhyme schemes here but none more impressive than spending a full twenty-five seconds on bars dismantling what he observes as dissing for clout. (A line about hopping on the “bandwagon” is all you need to know this isn’t directed to
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    Kendrick
                   </a>
                   , if it’s aimed at anyone in particular.) Cole ends the verse admitting that he let the bandwagon pass him by, leaving him with only one option: “Lead with the skill.” It’s the last track on the tape and the perfect note to leave on and tee up
                   <em>
                    The Fall-Off.
                   </em>
                   Let’s see how far the skills take him.
                  </p>
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                   </strong>
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                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   <strong>
                    J. Cole, “4 Your Eyez Only”
                   </strong>
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   The 2016 album of the same name isn’t one of my favorites of Cole’s, but
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    the final song and title track
                   </a>
                   , which ties together the project’s loose theme (it’s an album written from the perspective of Cole’s slain friend) with four absolutely killer, perspective-shifting verses over eight unwaveringly compelling minutes, is one of the best things he’s done across his superlative career. Between this and
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    “Change”
                   </a>
                   earlier on the album, it may not rank high in the Jermaine discography but even mid-tier Cole has some of his greatest work.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   <strong>
                    Don Toliver,
                   </strong>
                   <strong>
                    <em>
                     Octane
                    </em>
                   </strong>
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   Recency bias is a real thing. So is studio bias, which is where I first heard an earlier draft of this album when
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    Don
                   </a>
                   played it for me a few months back. And my first time hearing some of these songs live was at a private show Don held last week on top of a very high hill at a Porsche racetrack. Doing my very best to push all that aside, these songs hit just as hard in my living room at the sub-optimal (read: normal) volume level I’ve been reduced to hovering at from my bitch-ass new neighbors; I think I feel comfortable calling it the best album from a guy who quietly has one of contemporary rap’s most solid and consistent discographies. I’ll have a little more to say on this later in the week.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   <strong>
                    <em>
                     The Comeback
                    </em>
                   </strong>
                   <strong>
                    , Season 1
                   </strong>
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   I’m still pushing through this show and still finding it objectively funny but too cringeworthy and mean-spirited to really enjoy. I’m only halfway through season 1 since last week, but the episode where the reality-show producers force Lisa Kudrow’s Valerie to hire a manipulative little person as her assistant to juice ratings is the first time I’ve really laughed out loud.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   <strong>
                    <em>
                     The Sure Thing
                    </em>
                   </strong>
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   Romance season continues with this Rob Reiner rom-com from the 80s, starring John Cusack. I’d never heard of this, but it was included in the pack of throwback trailers New Beverly screened ahead of
                   <em>
                    When Harry Met Sally
                   </em>
                   and the scenes it teased really hit in the audience, so I made a mental note. And you know what? The whole movie would probably be a charming experience in a rep theater setting. At home on my couch, it was charming, but undone by Reiner and Cusack only accessing flashes of their future brilliance and a somewhat inevitable 80s datedness that kind of left me with a shrug.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   <strong>
                    <em>
                     Memory of a Killer
                    </em>
                   </strong>
                   <strong>
                    , FOX/Hulu
                   </strong>
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   I had the Rams vs Seahawks NFC game on in the background while I worked this Sunday because I’m a poser, and FOX was in overdrive using every commercial break to promote this new thriller starring McDreamy and Christopher Moltisanti. It felt like a throwback to the days when broadcast was still the center of the TV universe and the networks actually gave a shit about promoting intriguing series with starry casts; remember when the actual Super Bowl would be followed by a big, earth-shattering episode of whatever TV show was hot at the time? What are they playing after this year’s—
                   <em>
                    The Masked Singer
                   </em>
                   ? How far we’ve fallen from Kyle Chandler
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    dismantling a chest-cavity bomb
                   </a>
                   in Seattle Grace. So anyway, nostalgia and boredom pushed me to actually keep the channel on FOX and see what this show is hitting for and yes, it’s as incredibly hackneyed and cookie-cutter as you’d imagine a show about Patrick Dempsey as a dual-life hitman would be. Which is not to say it’s a bad watch. TV viewing is like the food pyramid—we could all use a little competently-made throwback network junk to restore the feeling.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   <strong>
                    <em>
                     The West Wing
                    </em>
                   </strong>
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   But for my bread group, I’m still yearning for a real heater. Even at the glacier pace that I’m pushing through my
                   <em>
                    Industry
                   </em>
                   screeners, I’ll be finished with that soon, and I’m already a third of the way through
                   <em>
                    The Pitt
                   </em>
                   . With nothing new in the immediate moment to fill the void, I’ve turned back to a Golden Oldie that’s always been on my list but I’ve never actually committed to in
                   <em>
                    The West Wing
                   </em>
                   . I’ve watched a handful of season 1 a couple of years ago then got too busy to stay with it; I’m hoping I can be disciplined enough now. Re-starting from the beginning with the pilot and man, when Aaron Sorkin’s on, he’s the GOAT. This show comes out swinging just as hard as I remember; Martin Sheen’s first line in his first scene still makes me stand up.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   <strong>
                    <em>
                     Gilmore Girls
                    </em>
                   </strong>
                   <strong>
                    , “Friday Night’s Alright for Fighting”
                   </strong>
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   Anyone with taste knows that as far as dialogue, charm and world-building goes, this is one of the best shows of all time. And anyone who knows ball knows that the idea that the show fell off once its singular-vision auteurs Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino (who would go on to create
                   <em>
                    Marvelous Ms Maisel
                   </em>
                   , a show I never had any interest in) left for its final season is a fallacy: it actually fell off during the last season of their tenure thanks to some truly tepid, character-assassinating story arcs.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   But that season also contains one of the all-time best episodes of the series, a duality only possible through the magic of the fluidity of this great medium. It’s around the mid-way point, after a schism between the titular mother-daughter Gilmore Girls and their blue-blood parents/grandparents has been raging for most of the season so far, robbing the show of its trademark Friday night dinner scenes where the full family gathers once a week for levity, drama or whatever any given episode calls for. Amidst protest, the four Gilmores convene for their first Friday night dinner in months and what follows is a
                   <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                    nearly 10-minute sequence
                   </a>
                   (the YouTube clip weirdly truncates most of the build-up) that serves as a tonal and artistic departure from the series norm where the full night is condensed into five minutes’ worth of jump cuts and in media res scenes where the family airs out issues both recent and historic amidst laughter, tears, yells and apologies.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                   It’s hilarious and it represents the beauty of television in a microcosm—this type of scene is only possible after five-and-a-half seasons spent with the same characters and all of their idiosyncrasies and shared histories. It doesn’t really work as a proof of brilliance to someone who’s never seen or is skeptical of the show, but also anyone with a brain can get the gist and appreciate it nonetheless. Anyway, one of many very millennial things about me is I like to keep the TV on in the background and channel-surf in hopes of landing on a familiar show, subject to the whims of cable programming, versus just intentionally loading up something of my choosing on streaming. So through that I know that a random network called StartTV runs
                   <em>
                    GG
                   </em>
                   in syndication, and this episode happened to be airing on a random night this week that I was up writing late, as good a work break as any.
                  </p>
                  <p style="margin:0">
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                       Read and share this post on the web.
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                    <strong>
                     Related reading from
                     <em>
                      GQ
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                     :
                    </strong>
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