J Cole 4 Your Eyez Only is one of the most human albums to come out in 2016.
Dreamville pioneer J Cole recently came out with another album to add to his catalogue ofacclaimed music projects. 4 Your Eyez Only sets itself apart from the rest by being a truly personal experiencetelling a story to his friend’s daughter Nina from the perspective of her deceit father.
For better or worse with only 10 songs and 44 minutes, the album definitely felt like a journey. The songs are quite long sometimes and a few could argue that they were drawn out unnecessarily. Folding Clothes for example had a nice concept, revolving around his pregnant girlfriend and Cole’s desire to make her life easier in this time. However,it’s just over 5 minutes long due to an outro that just didn’t feel needed. Although there were some good two part tracks on the album:
Changes was a welcome song on the LP that I will be coming back to often for a while now along with “4 your Eyez Only” the outro song which was the longest track being 8 minutes. The song tied together the wholes story and purpose of the album, almost as a plot twist since you don’t know J Cole’s album is about his friend until the very end. Those two songs had amazing production and the lyrics that came with them were concise and easy to follow since they both were story telling tracks – this is vital.
Some more touching songs on the cut were the “She’s Mine” couple, a two part concept that begins near the start of the album and concludes nearer to the end of it. Being about Cole’s new wife in part one and then his new-born daughter in the second part, J Cole conveys his deeper emotions that a lot of men fail to express in their music… Love. Throughout most of the album one of Cole’s major themes is breaking down hyper masculinity and conveying real emotions that enter people’s lives daily. On the album, he isn’t talking down on his male peers, rather he is saying he is on this journey discovering emotions he, like a lot of men, used to hide.
4 Your Eyez only can be a very powerful piece of music if you are one to listen, absorb and understand Cole’s purpose in these songs. However, if you’re one that prefers to casually listen in the background – its meaning will definitely be lost which means you may not enjoy it as much. I personally thoroughly enjoyed the experience when I took the time to take it however and I highly recommend you do the same!
Album: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/4-your-eyez-only/id1181531244
Edited by: Jessica Greaney
Sources:
http://genius.com/a/j-cole-plays-bass-and-guitar-on-five-songs-off-4-your-eyez-only
https://lasvegasweekly.com/nightlife/industry-weekly/2016/feb/04/j-cole-…