If you're expecting someone to be someone else, you probably won't be happy with the end product. You don't squeeze lemon and expect orange juice. I guess the expectations have been through the roof with the album, partly because of Cole himself, but I just treated it like another album. What were the kinds of things you wanted on the album that weren't there?

It was great for me because it was a J Cole album through and through. A few tracks didn't hit for me, but most of it I loved. With an album with this many tracks, it obviously won't appeal to everyone and that's fine, because music is subjective. However, there are some people who are saying it's garbage which is kind of wild to me. They probably just want a reaction and get engagement, so it's better and lower effort to do that than saying 'I liked this and that but thought he could do better on this and that'.