J. Cole Taught Me Mentorship
On January 20th, 2019, J. Cole cleared his Instagram page. The next day, he made four cryptic posts, each a simple graphic with a message. “I'm Counting My Bullets,” “I'm Loading My Clips,” “I'm Writing Down Names,” and “I'm Making A List.”
And then as quickly and quietly as they appeared, they were deleted, replaced with a single post: “MIDDLE CHILD.” All caps.
I’m Kris Hampton, and this is how J.Cole Taught Me Mentorship.
I have to admit, Jermaine Lamarr Cole isn’t my favorite rapper. He’s not even in my top five - even if we specify only the living. Probably won’t crack my top 20. I know some of you are shaking your heads in agreement. Some think it’s blasphemy. That’s what’s great about hip hop.
But this song, “Middle Child,” is most definitely a contender for the song I’ve played the most times in a row, ever.
I never saw those Instagram posts. I just wasn’t checking for him. I first heard the song - which had been produced, written, and recorded in a single day - in my wife’s car. She’s made a habit of searching for and casually playing hip hop that I’m not up on. And she does it like she’s always known, like it’s in her regular rotation. And while I can clearly see the ruse, I secretly love it.
Actually, I’m not even sure “heard” is the right word to use here. We were driving to the hardware store in our small town, and I was paying little attention beyond a steady, oblivious head nod to the rolling T-Minus 808’s. And then I heard the bars that widened my eyes and had me reaching immediately for the rewind button:
Fuck if you feel me, you ain't got a choice
Now I ain't do no promo, still made all that noise
This shit gon' be different, I set my intentions
I promise to slap all that hate out your voice
Alright. You’ve got my attention.
From the triumphant opening horns, sampled from “Wake Up to Me” by 1970’s Philly Trio First Choice, Cole is planting his flag in the ground. Right smack dab in the middle of two generations.
Any of us who grow old enough to see times change spend the majority of our coherent lives in this same middle ground - whether or not we acknowledge it. The problem comes when, as if we actually have a say in the matter, we try to stop time from moving forward. We still cue up the same R&B songs that played at senior prom like, “That’s my jam,” look for nostalgic playlists every time we open Spotify, and trash new rappers as if Nas was onto something in 2006 when he proclaimed that Hip Hop Is Dead.
Spoiler alert: Nas was wrong.
Cole is an old soul, opting for lyricism, message, and 92 BPMs over pop charts. But he’s not afraid to openly embrace the growth - the changing - of hip hop. He sees what it provides for the kids who spread their music on Soundcloud instead of pressing CD’s at Discmakers and handing them out in smoky clubs. The haze doesn’t block his view, but still, in his backpack he carries a necessary warning.
Everything grows, it's destined to change
I love you lil' — —, I'm glad that you came
I hope that you scrape every dollar you can
I hope you know money won't erase the pain
Big bro. He relishes the role, but knows it comes with great responsibility.
And the lines that snapped me out of my mindless head nod… he’s talking to the OG’s. At first it sounds as if he’s taking on the ever-present and cliche role of the reverent mentee, honoring those who came before.
To the OG’s, I'm thankin' you now
Was watchin' you when you was pavin' the ground
I copied your cadence, I mirrored your style
I studied the greats, I'm the greatest right now
“I studied the greats, I’m the greatest right now.” I fucking love this sentiment.
Cole isn’t here to gain the praise of the pioneers. He’s paying respect while also demanding it, and sometimes, especially in hip hop, true respect has to take the form of making a promise to:
slap all that hate out your voice
Little bro. He relishes the role, but knows it comes with great responsibility.
On paper, Cole should be one of my favorites.
The Bentley is dirty, my sneakers is dirty, but that’s how I like it
Yeah, me, too. Tacoma actually, but it is what it is.
His average BPM lands somewhere in the late 80’s or early 90’s, along with much of his hip hop inspiration.
Mine too.
Now, I know that’s not entirely fair, I mean, “Middle Child” lands at 124 BPM, but it’s how I’ve come to feel for whatever reason. And as I’ve purposely left the old in the past and embraced change, I’ve stopped checking for new message-laden boom bap, and somehow, that’s where I slotted J. Cole. Exactly as he acknowledges in the first seconds of the song, I had counted him out. That’s entirely on me. I’m human. I make mistakes.
He knew he wasn’t my favorite rapper. I’m sure of this because in the video for the song, while playing out not so cryptic scenes from middle America of mudding cars, hunting lodges, and grocery store freezer aisles where white women can purchase the features of black women, Cole shows us a mounted head on his mantle. The nameplate reads “Your Favorite Rapper.”
He’s not wrong.
As a middle child, Cole is more than just hollow talk. While he was ultimately beat out by the late Nipsey Hussle, this track was nominated in 2019 for the Best Rap Performance Grammy. Also nominated? Down Bad from his Dreamville mentees JID, Bas, EarthGang and Young Nudy, including a verse from Cole where frankly, even though he gets outshined by some of his crew, he makes his case for why we should keep checking for him.
Not to mention, this album, Revenge of the Dreamers 3, would also be nominated for a Best Rap Album Grammy. The Head Honcho hadn’t just reached forward in time and grabbed a new sound to propel his own career forward. He hadn’t just followed the cliche and put his friends on. He showed them how to reach out in every direction while staying true to your own vision. He’d MENTORED them. He put one of the biggest tracks of his career on a Dreamville compilation album alongside their songs. Teed up their success. Success that may surpass his own. Because real mentorship doesn’t come with a built-in ceiling for the mentee.
He reminds us that if your big bro’s aren’t proud of you for passing them by, then maybe they weren’t family at all. Real respect has to be earned, and being the first to do a thing isn’t necessarily enough. If you don’t keep growing, you are, by definition, stuck.
The real ones been dyin’ , the fake ones is lit
The game is off balance, I’m back on my shit
I know that’s right.
While “Middle Child”, now five times platinum, would go on to win a BET Award and end up being Cole’s highest charting single, the real win was ours, watching Cole embody in real time what he claimed to be in his music. Big bro and little bro, all at once, equally effective, and walking that line as well as it’s ever been done.
And here I am, once again, reaching to rewind.
Thanks for listening to Hip Hop Taught Me Everything. This whole show - from imagery to writing to beats to the website to final mixes - is created by the two of us: Kris Hampton and Devin Dabney.
You can support the show by sharing it with all of your friends who love hip hop. Or podcasts. Even better, both.
We know that we aren’t the only ones out here who were raised by hip hop. If you’d like to tell us about a lesson you learned from your favorite song, to possibly be featured on a future episode, share it with us at My Story.
