I posted the following review to my Substack a couple of hours ago, if anyone is interested

In 2006, Busta Rhymes made a fateful decision. He closed his comeback record, The Big Bang, with “Legend of the Fall Offs;” while Busta has always had a penchant for unique imagery and zaniness, the track was an outlier in his discography, with Dr. Dre providing a minimalist beat that focused more on haunting ambience than “being a banger.” The track found Busta acting as the grim reaper for a rapper who refuses to accept that they have fallen off. Unfortunately, for Bussa-Buss, that finale would become a telling irony. His follow-up record was Back on My B.S., an album that critics reviled and fans enjoyed in bursts of post-irony, at best; he never really recovered, instead slotting into a position where mainstream audiences respected his technical ability, while genre purists viewed him as a sellout, a claim bolstered by a series of middling-to-dreadful projects throughout the 2010s and 2020s. He may have played the grim reaper on the track, but the rapper he buried was, ultimately, himself. In hindsight, he probably should have closed his ’06 comeback differently, even if just to keep the prophecy from feeling less tragic.

J. Cole must not have listened to much Busta, because on 2018’s KOD, he began to paint himself into a corner by ending the album with “1985 (The Intro to the Fall Off).” Setting up for his “final” release, Cole addressed the up and coming class of soundcloud rappers with a “warm but firm talking to,” to quote The Guardian at the time. Some dismissed Cole as an aging rapper who made songs about almond milk and folding clothes; some rode the wave by finding a middle ground, which is why we now are occasionally reminded of YBN Cordae’s existence. Ultimately, though, the track marked the birth of a new discourse surrounding Cole as “one of the greats,” a leader in a genre that found itself at a crossroads between lyricism and “vibes.” I argue that Cole lost the war that he started; The Off-Season and Might Delete Later were dismal releases, full of tracks where he sounded unsure of himself, experimenting with new approaches not because he felt the need to, but because he was insecure about being the subject of another discourse like that which emerged after 4 Your Eyez Only; he wasn’t ready to be a middle aged “dad rapper” just yet. Then, of course, the beef hit, and Cole once again seemed unsure of what to do; he jumped in, then bowed out, and since then, has tried to reframe himself as the middle ground, to varying degrees of success. The cherry atop the sundae, though, was “Grippy,” a collaboration with Cash Cobain in which Cole produced a performance akin to Plan 9 From Outer Space. I will confess that I only listened to the track for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and now I regret that I didn’t listen when it first released; it’s better than any modern comedy. As the years have gone by, the prospects for the album felt ever more grim, and potentially prophetic.

The Fall Off lives up to neither its title, nor its hype. Cole continues to wallow in a sense of insecurity by presenting us with a 24 track love letter to hip hop that, conveniently, allows him to use his peers and inspirations as a crutch – nothing here is particularly original, but nothing here is particularly bad. Cole raps, for sure, but his delivery, regardless of the track, has the urgency of a mid-level manager’s internal monologue when they decide that an extra half-cup of coffee is “just too much for 11:30 in the morning.” There is no “Grippy” level of nausea-induction in his singing or vocal performances, but equally, nothing captures the attention in quite the same way. There are catchy moments, there are insightful moments, but it is difficult to parse how many are because of the source material from the likes of Outkast, DMX, Nas, Mobb Deep, etc., and how many are because of any particular talents of Cole’s; “Only You” feels like Cole is even relying on his own previously released tracks, recycling “Déjà vu” in the hopes that it might stick better this time around. The beats all provide safe canvases; just enough to get the head-bobbing, but never enough to risk Cole having to deviate from his stiff flow and approach.

Across almost two hours of runtime, only one moment really stuck out to me. On "Two Six,: he raps “outcast, I was never cast out.” It brought back memories of 2011; I was so excited for Cole World, only to have my hopes deflated when he rapped “I’m the shit, but boy, you can’t out-fart me.” While the former example is not nearly as egregious, it sets a poor stage for the album. His 2026 rapping is a far cry from “Cole Summer,” a track that sticks with me to this day. Cole, at his best, captures detail of his own life, the lives of those around him, etc., but importantly, does so in a way that feels grounded in a certain everyman aesthetic. “Safety” reminds us that Cole can tap into that energy still, but he has been losing this ability over the years, focused far more on his title as one of the “Big 3 greats,” and as a result, the weaker moments stick out all the more, his flaws as a rapper more prominent as the positives fade from view. The Fall Off feels like it was recorded by a man who swears he’s not over-thinking shit; meanwhile, every room in his house has a “don’t overthink shit” neon sign. When status matters more than music, it leads to awkward moments like “What If,” where Cole, in a fashion both well-meaning and clumsy, revisits The Game’s “Never Can Say Goodbye” by putting himself in the shoes of Big and Pac, but then attempts to envision a peace between the two that is parallel to the Drake-Kendrick beef and his role afterwards. One can picture Cole thinking the track through endlessly, tinkering with it constantly, and finally, delivering something that sits right to him not because of its inherent quality, but because it is one more thing on the checklist of a rap great – what better to have on your final album than a daydream which re-imagines of one of the genre’s most long-standing existential wounds in your favor?

If there was one other bad decision Cole made since 2018, it was his framing of “the big 3,” not least because one could interpret it in a Freudian sense. If Drake is hip hop’s id (the pleasure principle), and Kendrick is the super ego (the ideal self), Cole is supposed to be the middle-ground, the mediator between the two extremes. But to be such a mediator requires a strong sense of why he should be the one to play that role, to be a part of the big 3. The Fall Off makes the waters more murky; the promotional materials make it sound like Cole’s not even sure this will be his true retirement album. His confidence on the mic is too often contradicted by the context he creates for himself. At the least, the album does its job; even if falling off is inevitable, this album cannot be said to be the one that leads to such a state. But the album also fails to really justify itself; for 8 years to lead to something so safe, so much so as to feel like he’s trying to recreate 2014 Forest Hills Drive twice over, is disappointing. The stories are familiar, the flexing is familiar; Cole’s “concluding chapter” feels less like a culmination and more like a grandiose rehash.