J. Cole's Early Life
Jermaine Lamarr Cole, famously known as J. Cole, is a successful hip-hop artist that was raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
J. Cole was born in the 97th General Hospital at a United States Army base in Frankfurt, West Germany. At the age of 8 months, Cole relocated to Fayetteville, North Carolina where he was raised by his mother, aunt and cousin.
Getting Into the Rap-Game
J. Cole started rapping at 12 years old when his cousin showed him the basics of rhyming and word play. Shortly after his fascination with lyricism, his mother bought him an 808 beat machine so Cole could produce his beats.
J. Cole begin releasing his music on multiple online forums at the age of 17. During his first few tracks that he released, Cole went by "Therapist".
In 2007, shortly after graduating college, Cole released his first album called "The Come Up". This album got a lot of positive feedback, but didn't have the gravity Cole needed to take off. Cole decided to take another more extravagant route to fame.
In 2007, on a rainy day, Cole sat outside the studio of world famous rapper Jay-Z's with a shirt that read "Produce for Jay-Z or die trying." Cole was motivated to have Jay-Z sign him under his label Roc Nation, but when Cole finally encountered Jay-Z, he responded, "Man I don't want that," and got denied.
That didn't stop Cole from continuing his dream. Cole released another album in 2009 called "The Warm Up". Shortly after the release of this album, Cole's song "Lights Please" took off and got a lot of feedback. Jay-Z heard the song and decided he wanted J. Cole to work for him, so he got a call and had Cole sign onto Roc Nation.
Accomplishments
Since J. Cole got signed to Roc Nation, he has released two albums. The first album "Cole World: A Sideline Story" was released in September of 2011 and sold 288,000 copies within the first week. The following week the album had 500,000 copies sold and went gold.
J. Cole later produced his second album called "Born Sinner." Initially, Cole was going to release the album in late January, but pushed the date back because he "needed some extra time to perfect some things." After a couple months of advertising and production, Cole set a release date to June 25th, 2013. Cole then heard that Kanye West was releasing his album "Yeezus" a week prior to Cole's, so Cole decided to push the release date up to June 18th, 2013 to compete with Kanye.
After the albums were released, Born Sinner took second place on Billboard 200, right behind Kanye West's album Yeezus.
Present Life of J. Cole
Currently Cole is working on his newest album that will be released December 9th, 2014. The album is called 2014 Forest Hills Drive and is expected to reach top ten on Billboard 200 just with pre-orders alone.
