Sean Sharp's Diary

Pretty hard to stick the landing on a 100-minute album but Cole scored nearly all tens. It's almost difficult to know where to start when talking about this thing considering how dense it is with material. The production is flat out gorgeous. Tapping into that never ending well of samples, "The Fall-Off" makes me wonder where this level of production was over the last few projects. I haven't really loved a J. Cole album since "4 Your Eyez Only", but this brings me right back. His last two excursions were more pieces of their times. KOD features a lot of electronic production, that I still loved, but didn't have the same quality as the previous few. "The Off-Season" then started exploring post 2020s trap after the dust had settled around the hype of it in the 2010s. We don't talk about "Might Delete Later". I was turning into one of those fans. "I miss the old J. Cole". Now in 2026, 10 years after "4 Your Eyez Only", he returns with this. There is a slew of outstanding tracks on here and they aren't clumped together eliminating any potential dead space on the track list. The lyrics and songwriting are just downright phenomenal. Circling back to the same logic as the previous paragraph, the lyrics are a return to form with perfectly smooth flows in rich stories that challenge "Wet Dreamz". Most notably, "I Love Her Again" does a fantastic job of painting a very real human experience of judgement and self-realization. I don't know another artist that writes as bluntly but as fluid as Cole. He walks that line like a tightrope on here. The range of songs is also sweet. "The Let Out" and "Ocean Way" give such a unique style as a cornerstone on the album that he's never really explored before. Most songs are somewhere in the middle on an intensity scale. "Two Six" acts of the more hype one of the bunch and does it in a refreshing flawless way. J. Cole's completely abandoned his deeper voice version of himself from back in the day and replaced it with a ton of smaller details that fill that absence spectacularly. My two favorites on here are "Lonely at the Top" and "What If". The former is almost the opposite of a relatable human experience but instead serves as a type of honestly that is so refreshing from someone of his stature. Typically the most you hear is just the title. "It's lonely at the top." But never any elaboration. This songs goes in deep to pull out the inner workings of it. "What If" features a gorgeous back and forth by Cole and Morray on the chorus and explores another common human experience. Going back in time to put aside the petty things. I'm very glad to see J. Cole go out this way. I want more but would also love for this to be his ultimate send off.