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GET TO KNOW J. COLE 

Jermaine Lamarr Cole (born On January 28, 1985) is a rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer from the United States. He is considered one of his generation's most influential rappers. 

Cole, who was born on a military installation in Germany and reared in Fayetteville, North Carolina, rose to prominence as a rapper with the publication of his debut mixtape, The Come Up, in early 2007. 

After signing to Jay-Roc Z's Nation label in 2009, he went on to release two more mixtapes, The Warm-Up (2009) and Friday Night Lights (2010), all of which received critical praise. Cole's debut studio album, Cole World: The Sideline Story, was released in 2011. 

It debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 in the United States. Born Sinner (2013) was also a Billboard 200 chart-topper. Forest Hills Drive (2014), Cole's first album with more conscious themes, topped the Billboard 200 and garnered him a Best Rap Album nomination at the 2015 Grammy Awards. 

4 Your Eyez Only (2016), his jazz-influenced fourth album, landed at number one on the Billboard 200. Cole's fifth studio album, KOD (2018), debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and had a then-record six simultaneous top twenty songs on the Billboard Hot 100, matching him with the Beatles. His sixth studio album, The Off-Season, was released on May 14, 2021, earning him his sixth number-one album. 

Cole, who self-taught himself to play the piano, also works as a producer alongside his rap career, creating tracks for singers such as Kendrick Lamar and Janet Jackson, along with handling the majority of production in his own projects. He has also founded Dreamville Records and the Dreamville Foundation, both of which are non-profit organizations. 

Revenge of the Dreamers III (2019) by Dreamville reached number one on the Billboard 200 and was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 2020 Grammy Awards. Cole chose to lodge single moms rent-free in his boyhood home in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in January 2015.

Early life:

Cole was born in Frankfurt, West Germany, on January 28, 1985, at an American military base. His dad is an African American veteran of the United States Army, and his mother, Kay,, is a European American who worked for the United States Postal Service.  

Cole's father eventually left the family when he was a child. His mother brought him and his elder brother Zach to the United States when he was eight months old, to Fayetteville, North Carolina. Cole was up in a multi-ethnic environment, and when asked how much his ethnicity influences him, he said, "I can relate with white people because I know my mother, her side of the family, who I adore."But, in the end, [I've] never felt white.

 I identify with white people, but I've never felt like one of them. I connect more with my appearance since that is how I was treated [but] not always negatively." Cole enjoyed sports and music as a child, and he was a first-chair violinist for the Terry Sanford Orchestra until 2003. 

Cole started rapping just at age of twelve and recognized it as a viable career path in 2000 when his mother gave him an ASR-X musical sampler as a Christmas present. During this time, Cole focused on honing his producing talents, subsequently commencing his first production under the alias Therapist. Cole later worked with the local group Bomm Sheltuh, rapping and producing alongside them. Cole can be seen in the crowd in Dave Chappelle's Block Party, a 2006 documentary.

 Cole thought that his prospects of landing a record deal would be higher in New York City after graduating from high school with a 4.2 GPA. He relocated and was awarded a scholarship at St. John's University. Cole went from computer science to communication and business after observing the life of a lonely computer science professor. 

Cole was the president of Haraya, a pan-African student coalition, in college. With a 3.8 GPA, he finished magna cum laude in 2007. Despite graduating, Cole received his degree during a homecoming concert in 2015, admitting that he owed money for a library book, prompting the institute

Musical career:

Cole and his cousin worked on creating their basic understanding of rhyming and wordplay, as well as beginning to learn how to interpolate storytelling within their lyrics, after being musically inspired by Canibus, Nas, Tupac, and Eminem. Cole had several notebooks full of song ideas by the age of 14 but was unable to produce beats beyond sampling. 

Cole's mother then bought him the Roland TR-808 drum machine to help him learn more about producing. Over the following three years, he began posting music on numerous internet forums as Blaza but then changed his name to Therapist.

 Cole eventually expanded his production to make a whole CD's worth of instrumentals and headed to Roc the Mic Studio in the hopes of playing it for Jay Z during American Gangster recording sessions. Cole was kept waiting for more than three hours before being fired by Jay Z. The CD was eventually utilized as the backdrop for Cole's debut mixtape, The Come Up. 

J. Cole's second mixtape, The Warm Up, was released on June 15, 2009, to good reviews. Cole had an appearance on Jay-Z's 2009 album The Blueprint 3 on the track "A Star Is Born."

 He appears on Wale's debut album Attention Deficit (2009) and mixtape Back to the Feature (2009). Cole, along with labelmate Jay Electronica and Mos Def, participated in Talib Kweli and Hi-track Tek's "Just Begun" for the follow-up to Reflection Eternal's album Train of Thought (2000), titled Revolutions Per Minute, in January 2010. (2010).

 Cole also appeared on B.o.May B's 25 (2010) mixtape, on the song "Gladiators," which was produced by The Alchemist.

Cole was recognized as one of Beyond Race magazine's "50 Great Breakthrough Artists" in early 2010, ranking 49, which resulted in the cover story of the publication's #11 issue, as well as a Q&A for the magazine's website.

 He was also recognized in the 2010 edition of XXL Magazine's Top Ten Freshmen, an annual magazine concentrating on young rappers. Cole began a collegiate tour on March 19, 2010, and concluded on April 30, 2010, in New Brunswick, NJ at Rutgers University's annual Rutgersfest.

 The trip also included a performance at Syracuse University with fellow rapper Wiz Khalifa. On March 31, 2010, he debuted a new song named "Who Dat," which was later released as a single on April 30, 2010. Cole also appeared on Young Chris' song "Still The Hottest" and Miguel's breakthrough single "All I Want Is You."

 Cole was also featured on the single "We On," which did not make the final tracklist for DJ Khaled's Victory LP. On June 15, 2010, J. Cole released a freestyle titled "The Last Stretch" to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the release of The Warm Up mixtape. J. Cole debuted the music video for his first song "Who Dat" on the BET show 106 & Park on June 21, that year.

 At the 2010 Underground Music Awards in August, Cole was named UMA Male Artist of the Year for his celebrated The Warm Up mixtape and a high-profile agreement with Jay-Z's label Roc Nation. J. Cole unveiled three tracks off his first album in a July 2010 interview: "Dreams," "Won't Be Long," and "Never Told," which was produced by No I.D. A demo named "I'm Coming Home" was released onto the internet on October 30, 2010. 

Cole recorded a song for Diddy as a reference track, which subsequently became "Coming Home" from Last Train to Paris (2010). J. Cole released his third official mixtape, Friday Night Lights, on November 12, 2010.  The tape included Drake, Wale, and Omen, with Cole handling the majority of the production.

Cole released "Be Free" on August 15, 2014, in response to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Three days later, he returned to the city to meet with protestors and activists gathered near the site of his gunshot to address the civil unrest that was raging within the city. 

On December 10, he sang the song with one additional verse on the Late Show with David Letterman. On November 16, Cole published a video announcing the release of his third studio album, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, on December 9. The movie included footage of the album's composition as well as the revelation that the album's name was drawn from Cole's boyhood home address. 

He indicated that there would be no lead singles and limited marketing for the album, but it was accompanied by four promotional songs: "Apparently," "Wet Dreamz," "No Role Modelz," and "Love Yourz." When it was released, the album opened at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 353,000 copies in its first week. On February 13, 2015, Cole announced the "Forest Hills Drive Tour." Forest Hills Drive: Live, his first live CD, was inspired by the tour. 

The album was recorded during the tour's Fayetteville shows and was released on Cole's 31st birthday. Forest Hills Drive was awarded platinum on March 31, 2014. In the United States, the album had sold 1.24 million copies as of December 2016. 

Forest Hills Drive was named Top Rap Album at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards and Album of the Year at the 2015 BET Hip Hop Awards 2014.   

The album was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards. The song "Apparently" was nominated for Best Rap Performance as well. Cole launched a documentary series named J. Cole: Road to Homecoming on December 15, 2015, in advance of his HBO program Forest Hills Drive: Homecoming. 

Kendrick Lamar, Wale, Rihanna, Pusha T, Big Sean, Jay Z, and Drake made guest appearances in the five-episode series. Until January 9, all episodes were posted weekly and were free to watch on Vimeo. 

Forest Hills Drive: Homecoming, a concert video taken during the final event of his Forest Hills Drive Tour at the Crown Coliseum in Fayetteville, North Carolina, premiered on January 9, 2016. Cole launched Forest Hills Drive: Live as well as the music video for "Love Yourz" from the concert film on January 28, 2016.

DJ Khaled's ninth studio album, Major Key, was released on July 29, 2016. Cole appears in the song "Jermaine's Interlude." "Said all I could say, now I play with thoughts of retirement," is a direct statement from the song that made some Cole fans concerned about him and his music career.

 Doctor Dot of Atlanta duo EarthGang explained in an interview with Genius that the song was originally a nine-minute posse cut, saying, "We were just trying to get Bas to fuck with the song, but Cole was like, 'I can't resist this beat,' so he hit the weed for the first time in a long time."   

Cole's fourth album, titled 4 Your Eyez Only, was made available for pre-order on iTunes on December 1, 2016, with a release date of December 9, 2016. Cole released a 40-minute documentary named Eyez on Tidal on December 2, 2016.

 It includes behind-the-scenes footage of Cole and collaborators working on the album, as well as two music videos for the songs "Everybody Dies" and "False Prophets," which were not featured on the album. "False Prophets" and "Everybody Dies" were published as singles on the iTunes store and other streaming platforms on December 5. 

Cole's fourth number-one album, 4 Your Eyez Only, opened at number one on the Billboard 200 with 492,000 album-equivalent units, 363,000 of which were pure album sales. 

On January 6, 2019, Cole went on Twitter to promote Dreamville's compilation album Revenge of the Dreamers III by sharing a gold poster-like invitation. Recording sessions took conducted in Atlanta from January 6 until January 16, 2019. Throughout the 10-day recording period, invites were distributed to the whole Dreamville roster as well as additional artists and producers outside of Dreamville.

 Big K.R.I.T., Mike Will Made It, DJ Khaled, Swizz Beatz, Tay Keith, T.I, Rick Ross, 9th Wonder, and Wale were among 343 artists and producers invited to the sessions. On January 23, 2019, Cole released "Middle Child," his first lead single since 2013. With only one day of monitoring, "Middle Child" debuted at number 26 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

J. Cole released his first song of 2020, "Snow on the Bluff," on June 16, 2020, a politically heated track released shortly after the death of George Floyd, which led to debates and criticism from Noname and other rappers. 

Cole released two tracks, "The Climb Back" and "Lion King on Ice," on July 23, 2020, as the first two songs off his upcoming album The Fall Off. Lewis Street, a promotional EP, featured the singles. Cole headed to Instagram on December 29, 2020, to publish a picture of a list titled "The Fall Off Era." Features and Revenge of the Dreamers III were crossed from the list. 

Two projects, The Off-Season and It's a Boy, which he said will be released before The Fall Off, were also included but not struck out. "I still have some goals I need to cross off for' I scram..." stated the caption of the post. J. Cole has unveiled the release date and album artwork for The Off-Season, his sixth studio album, on May 4, 2021. "Interlude," the album's debut song, was released on May 7. 

On May 14, 2021, the Off-Season was published. T-Minus co-produced the album, which featured guest performances from Murray, 21 Savage, Lil Baby, Bas, and 6LACK. 

It got favorable reviews from reviewers and debuted at the top of the US Billboard 200, selling 282,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, giving Cole his sixth number-one album in the country. "My Life" (at 2), "Amari" (at 5), "Pride Is the Devil" (at 7), and "95 South" (at 10) all debuted in the top ten on the US Billboard Hot 100. (at 8). The previous week, "Interlude" arrived at number eight, giving the album five top ten singles.

J. Cole released a freestyle named "Heaven's EP" on September 21, 2021, remixing the tune of Drake's Certified Lover Boy's "Pipe Down." The song was eventually included on the Dreamville collection D-Day: A Gangsta Grillz Mixtape on March 31, 2022, with Cole, also performing on the tracks "Stick" and "Freedom of Speech."

Basketball career:

Cole attended Terry Sanford High School in North Carolina, where he played basketball. He tried out as a walk-on at St. John's University with an academic scholarship and was one of ten call-back players during his sophomore year. 

Cole represented the Eastern Team in the NBA All-Star Weekend Celebrity Game in 2012. Cole told Sports Illustrated in 2013: "Sports are where it all began for me. It is similar to my life. Rap is a very competitive genre. That is why I must watch sports. 

I have to keep up. It's just another version of my existence."Cole wrote an essay for The Players' Tribune on July 20, 2020, about his plans after graduating from college to play professional basketball, saying "If I can blow up in the next three years, I'll be 27 years old. That may still be enough time for me to practice and seek a professional basketball career. I'll work hard enough to play overseas before attempting to get into the NBA."

 Cole's first signature sneaker, the PUMA RS-Dreamer, was released on July 31, 2020, in conjunction with Puma.

Cole inked a deal with the Rwanda-based Patriots Basketball Club in the Basketball Africa League on May 10, 2021. [Cole was also featured on the cover of the May 2021 issue of the American basketball magazine SLAM. Cole made his pro debut against the Rivers Hoopers on May 16, finishing with three points, three rebounds, and two assists in 17 minutes. 

In 45 minutes of action in three games with the team, he scored five points, had three assists, and had five rebounds. He was only signed for a minimum of three games. He quit the squad after only three games. Cole joined the Scarborough Shooting Stars of the Canadian Elite Basketball League on May 19, 2022.

Business ventures

Dreamville Records:

During the development of The Come Up, Cole founded his own record company alongside current label president Ibrahim Hamad in early 2007. Cole was looking for a way to release his own music, while Hamad wanted to start a record label, which led the both to form Dreamville Records. Interscope Records presently distributes the label. 

Cole's Dreamville Records logo appears. The label's first artists were Cole, Omen, and Bas. Cole, Omen, Bas, Cozz, Lute, Ari Lennox, JID, and duo EarthGang are among the label's artists. In-house producers include Elite, Ron Gilmore, Cedric Brown, and Meez. 

The Recording Industry Association of America has recognized three Dreamville Records albums as platinum or higher (RIAA).

The Dreamville Foundation :

Cole launched The Dreamville Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, in October 2011. According to the Foundation, it was "established to 'bridge the gap' between the realms of opportunity and the urban youngsters of Fayetteville, North Carolina." 

The Foundation performs charitable events with volunteers, such as an annual "Back To School Supply Giveaway" to distribute school supplies to youngsters. 

The Foundation also started a book club for young men and sponsored a writing contest and Mother's Day brunch for students. It hosts an annual weekend of community events in Fayetteville dubbed "Dreamville Weekend," which includes a conversation with the Young Men's Book Club and Appreciation Dinner, as well as a Career Day panel of African-American professionals from a number of disciplines. Cole paid $120,000 for his childhood house in Fayetteville, North Carolina, through the Dreamville Foundation in 2014. 

Jermaine's mother had been evicted from the house years before when he was in college in New York. His idea is to convert the house into a rent-free residence for single moms and their children.

Dreamville Festival :

J. Cole revealed the Dreamville Festival on April 27, 2018, a festival that would feature local music, culture, cuisine, and art, as well as a combination of up-and-comers and national bands. It is planned to be an annual event. However, due to Hurricane Florence, the event was rescheduled from its planned date.

 The event was rescheduled for April 6, 2019, in the historic Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. All of Dreamville's performers were on the bill, as well as SZA, Big Sean, Nelly, 21 Savage, 6LACK, Davido, Teyana Taylor, Saba, Rapsody, and Mez. The earnings from the Dreamville Festival will be donated to the Dorothea Dix Park Conservancy and the Dreamville Foundation.

Fashion : 

J. Cole signed a multi-year footwear and apparel deal with Puma as an ambassador for the company in February 2020. Cole, according to Puma's worldwide director, is involved in product development, marketing campaigns, and cultural direction.

 Puma and Cole also created a short film for the reinvented "Sky Dreamer" sneakers, which will premiere during the 2020 NBA All-Star Game. PUMA and J. Cole unveiled their first collaboration sneaker, the PUMA RS-Dreamer, on July 31, 2020. 

 Cole had this to say about his signature shoe: "Basketball shoes have advanced significantly in terms of technology and comfort over the years, but they have drifted too far from designs that are fashionable enough for cultural relevance. The Dreamer wishes to alter that reality. 

The best level of on-court performance meets the highest degree of daily wear and beautiful design. You may hoop in the same shoes you wore outdoors once more." The shoe's release corresponded with the commencement of the 2019–20 NBA season.

Personal life: 

Cole confirmed his marital status in a January 2016 interview with filmmaker Ryan Coogler. Melissa Heholt, Cole's wife, is the Executive Director of the Dreamville Foundation. They met whilst studying at St. 

John's University. Cole also revealed that he and his wife have a son in a May 2018 interview with radio personality Angie Martinez. He spoke openly about his son in 2019. Cole stated he has two children on July 20, 2020. Master P also revealed in August 2020 that Cole was preparing to try out for the NBA.

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