Not since The Big Day has a rapper’s cultural goodwill evaporated as quickly as when J. Cole deleted “7 Minute Drill,” a diss where he called To Pimp a Butterfly sleepy and overrated, from streaming platforms. It was a bold claim and at every turn, he relegated the burden of proof to his long-awaited seventh album, The Fall-Off, a record designed to prove, once and for all, that J. Cole is one of the greatest rappers of all time. Engineered as a career-defining masterpiece—the final destination of two decades of artistic output—The Fall-Off is mostly just another J. Cole album. It crumples under expectations few records could hope to meet.
The road to The Fall-Off began in earnest with “1985 (Intro to the ‘The Fall Off’),” a rare gem on Cole’s overcooked 2018 album KOD. One Tuesday in December 2020, he posted a memo outlining the Fall-Off era, which included records like the already released Revenge of the Dreamers III, 2021’s The Off-Season, and the since-scrapped It’s a Boy. These projects trickled out with little urgency over the next couple years, especially once Cole was distracted by the war between Kendrick Lamar and Drake and the release of 2024’s unplanned Might Delete Later, most notable for previously containing “7 Minute Drill.” Now Cole returns to wrap his career in a bow, increasing the pressure for The Fall-Off to right his missteps.
With The Fall-Off, Cole imagines the perfect rap album as an Alexandrian quest to conquer a wide breadth of styles and ideas, even the ones he has no business tackling. “Two Six” is a kill-’em-all tough-guy moment with a hook uncannily reminiscent of Sexyy Red’s on “SkeeYee.” Reminiscing on his calmer, fan-favorite styling on 4 Your Eyez Only, many tracks tell introspective stories of his past, though “Run a Train” is the only one with a standout awful Future chorus and a tacky genocide allegory. Cole has never been the strongest singer; his balladry on “39 Intro” makes it clear he’s not worried about that, but Post Malone’s acoustic hit “Stay” shouldn’t be an aspirational vocal reference.
Cole justifies The Fall-Off’s double-disc length by focusing each half on a trip home, at ages 29 and 39, representing two different points in his mission to be the greatest. But he lacks the ability to keep the record moving with fresh ideas and the concept buckles under its own weight. Songs approach five minutes with no distinct direction, like “Bunce Road Blues,” where Cole, Future, and Tems take turns over a milquetoast beat from the Alchemist. “The Let Out” laces a Timbaland-esque beat with overdramatic electric guitar stabs and a singalong chorus with Broadway gravitas. While he feels most at home on infectious dirty South homages, they don’t often feel inspired. Two of the stickiest tracks—“WHO TF IZ U” and “Old Dog,” featuring Petey Pablo—rely on interpolations (Trillville’s “Some Cut” and T.I.’s “24’s,” respectively) that already cropped up on hits by Doechii and Drake and 21 Savage in recent years. Strong songs nonetheless, they do little to quell the narrative that J. Cole has been a step behind his peers for a while now.
Cole remains a technically strong rapper but often gives the impression he’s reading directly out of a notebook. His verses on “Run a Train” sound like they were designed for one of those videos mapping out MF DOOM rhyme schemes in different colors of highlighter. Strange concepts, like the FaceTime call through time on “Bombs in the Ville/Hit the Gas” and the necromantic Tupac and Biggie dialogue on “What If,” aren’t any smarter or better executed than his straightforward raps; they’re just overwrought. Conversely, when he relinquishes some of his knottier ideas, he sounds genuinely excited to be rapping on “Poor Thang” and “Old Dog.” These tidbits of excellence suggest his pen and flow can still get the job done; why strive for greatness in a far more complicated way?
Quintessential to a J. Cole record, The Fall-Off offers some insane societal commentary that calls into question how many of his daily comings and goings involve actual people. His musings on women on “Legacy” and “I Love Her Again” via menopause bars and eye-rolling OnlyFans references are just baffling. The worst perpetrator of all, “Safety,” tries to deliver a self-sanctified testimony of allyship with some violently distasteful storytelling: He describes a childhood friend who died of AIDS by saying he “[ran] with fruity types, dick-in-the-booty types,” and in almost the same breath, condemns the use of anti-gay slurs. “Safety” feels like a roundabout apology for Cole’s embarrassingly long history of transphobic and homophobic bars, but it’s well-meaning in the clunkiest, shallowest way possible. His inability to recognize the oxymoron makes Cole’s introspection on this topic feel less like a genuine reckoning and more like a feeble attempt at bleaching out the darkest stains of his career.
Burnishing his reputation as hip-hop’s most humble servant, Cole continuously retells the story of his miraculous underdog success. Especially when he evokes his hometown on tracks like “and the whole world is the Ville,” his musings are genuinely inspiring. His ability to frame his own success as something everyone is capable of achieving and his philanthropic affection for his Fayetteville, North Carolina hometown have always been some of his strongest qualities. But it’s never been harder to empathize with a millionaire arguing that money won’t solve your problems, as on “The Villest,” where he interpolates Outkast’s classic “Elevators (Me & You)” with Erykah Badu to ask, “If money gives happiness, then please explain the rich bastards with no peace.” When the humility bars fly just minutes after J. Cole reexpresses his desire to be the greatest of all time, the magnetism of both poles is dampened.
By the end of The Fall-Off, it’s abundantly clear the album doesn’t warrant 101 minutes: J. Cole doesn’t have the perceptive lyricism of the strongest independent rap, nor the novel production of the regional underground scenes, nor the mainstream gloss of someone like Don Toliver. He’s also said that this album will be his last, a claim no rapper has ever followed through on. But if he does, it would be a shame. Cole is still undeniably talented and there’s space for him to shine in modern hip-hop. Plenty of moments on The Fall-Off remind of the hunger of his early mixtapes, the purposeful thrills of his 2010s hits, or even the misguided zaniness of KOD, though none materialize in meaningful doses. The Fall-Off would be more fascinating if it were a trainwreck, but this chapter of J. Cole’s career closes with a whimper.
