There is no doubt in my mind that J. Cole is one of the best rappers in the rap game today. His lyrics are clearly understandable, and reach out to a variety of people regardless of the various people they associated themselves with.He just released his debut album, “Cole World: The Sideline Story” on September 27. But that isn’t the only music he has released. Prior to the release of his debut album, he released six mixtapes on many various sites, one of the more popular sites being Datpiff.com. His debut mixtape “The Come Up” (released 2008), contained a popular track “Dolla and a Dream”. Cole released continuations of the song in his mixtape “The Warm Up” called “Dolla and a Dream II”, and off his debut album called “Dolla and a Dream III”. In my mind, there is not a more inspirational song by a rapper about how you can make something out of just a dollar and a dream.On his debut mixtape, Cole also released “Simba”, a song that he uses to compare himself to Simba, a character from “The Lion King.” He would continue to release a continuation of that song like “Dolla and a Dream”, only the songs didn’t stick with the same title. The songs instead were “Grown Simba” and “The Return of Simba”.

One of my favorite songs off of Cole’s debut album is “Mr. Nice Watch”. This song features fellow rapper Jay-Z, also Cole’s label signer.

“They say time is money, but really it’s not. If we ever go broke girl, then time is all we got. And you can’t get that back, no you can’t get that back,” sings Cole in the hook of that song. And, that statement is entirely true in my mind. Once you use up time, there is no way to get it back. And if all you have is time, then you’ve got a lot. You don’t need money, just time.

Prior to the release of J. Cole’s debut album, he started a trend called “Any Given Sunday”, where before he released his debut album, he would release something new every week. During this time he released three of his mixtapes. Those mixtapes only contained a few songs a piece and those songs were the songs that didn’t make the cut for the actual album. The three mixtapes held songs that had great potential, but still lack some of the lyricism and flow that songs on the album had.

J. Cole is touring the U.S. now, and at the end of the month he will begin touring in Europe.