The stage set for J Cole’s current world tour has been designed to look like a prison exercise yard, complete with barbed wire, punchbag, searchlights and a weightlifting bench. The rapper himself appears wearing an orange convict’s uniform: his backing band are, as he puts it, “in lockdown”, hidden behind the fake prison’s walls. Cole certainly isn’t the first hip-hop artist to play with this kind of imagery, but he may well be the first to interrupt his live show in order to show CCTV footage of a Swat team raiding his home in North Carolina, after a neighbour informed the police that they suspected Cole was a drug dealer, apparently working on the principle that the musicians regularly visiting his studio were customers. It’s a genuinely shocking piece of film, to which he offers a commentary that veers from surprisingly wry – “you ever play Call of Duty? They look like they’re wearing stuff from Call of Duty, but the stuff you gotta pay extra money in the game to buy” – to furious and disconsolate. “Can you believe this shit? I moved to a nice neighbourhood,” he sighs. “You know what people mean when they say nice neighbourhood, right? A white neighbourhood.”
The footage acts as an explicatory afterword to the livid song the incident inspired, Neighbors. He follows its incredulous anger with Foldin’ Clothes, a track that caused a degree of bemused hilarity online when it appeared on his most recent album, last year’s 4 Your Eyez Only. “It really is a song about fuckin’ laundry,” notes Cole, a celebration of the mundane domesticity of married life, not exactly a topic that’s been pored over by hip-hop lyricists over the years: “I get the basket and I grab your clothes out of the drier.” You could view this study in contrasts as a demonstration of the twin polarities of his writing, in which politics and righteous anger co-exist with a certain goofy, self-deprecating humour that might cause fans of “golden age” hip-hop to recall the Pharcyde or De La Soul, as illustrated by his performance of Wet Dreamz, a 2014 single that relates the saga of Cole losing his virginity. But there seems something more pointed and potent about it than just a demonstration of his range – everyone does the kind of humdrum chores detailed in Foldin’ Clothes; not everyone has them interrupted by the arrival of armed police.
Aside from the set, Cole’s show offers almost nothing in the way of the usual stadium gig special effects. No spectacular lights, no pyrotechnics: just him, a charmingly gangly blur of arms and legs much given to holding up proceedings and explaining at length what the preceding song was about. Watching him, it’s hard not to be struck by what an odd and unique figure he cuts in hip-hop’s upper echelons. His oeuvre is light on pop chart-friendly, hook-laden bangers. The tracks from 4 Your Eyez Only in particular are spare and understated, with a distinct early 90s influence. Most rap albums tend to sprawl, but 4 Your Eyez Only is as crisp and concise as his live show, which packs a lot of material into an encore-free hour and 10 minutes. The appearance on stage of his protege Ari Lennox to sing the hook from Change – a track that matches a carefree, jazzy, summery musical backdrop to the grim saga of a childhood friend who was murdered at the age of 22 – serves to underline that Cole’s music largely eschews the kind of big name guest appearances that are supposed to be de rigueur in the world of hip-hop. Indeed the glowing mantra “J Cole went platinum with no features” was repeated so often by his fans on social media that it ended up becoming a meme, a comic response to every achievement, no matter how remarkable.
No obvious big pop hits, no profile-boosting guest stars, and yet here he is, filling stadiums with audiences who have his lyrics memorised word perfect: at one point, the sound of them shouting along to No Role Modelz and A Tale of 2 Citiez threatens to drown him out entirely. You can see why. His lyrics are thoughtful and sharp, packed with lines that leap out at you – from “Nowadays crime pays like a part-time job,” to “I never thought I’d see the day I’m drinking almond milk” – and his delivery of them switches grippingly between a cracked soul croon and a furious bark: his repeated shift between the two vocal styles on Ville Mentality is dramatic and gripping.
He’s also a genuinely engaging live performer, smart enough to ensure his lengthy between-song disquisitions on the songs’ meanings never sound preachy and are always leavened with humour. Smart enough too to remain down to earth in a world of extravagant claims and solipsistic examinations of the downside of vast, multi-million, VIP-area success. “I got a regular-ass Ikea desk,” he notes, when describing the furnishings in his home, to a delighted roar of approval from the crowd.
