J. Cole

Jermaine Lamarr Cole (born January 28, 1985) is an American rapper and record producer.

Jermaine Lamarr Cole was born on January 28, 1985, at an American military base in Frankfurt, West Germany.

His father is an African American veteran, who served in the U.S. Army, and his mother, Kay, born in Michigan, is a white American who was a postal worker for the United States Postal Service.

Cole's father later abandoned the family during his youth.

At the age of eight months his mother moved with him and his older brother Zach to the United States, to Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Cole grew up in a multi-ethnic environment, and when asked about how closely his ethnicity impacts him, Cole commented, "I can identify with white people, because I know my mother, her side of the family, who I love. But at the end of the day, [I've] never felt white. I can identify [with white people] but never have I felt like I'm one of them. I identify more with what I look like, because that's how I got treated [but] not necessarily in a negative way".

Cole began rapping at the age of twelve, and saw it as an ideal profession in 2000, when his mother purchased an ASR-X musical sampler as a Christmas gift.

During this period, Cole heightened emphasis on improving his production skills, later beginning initial production under the pseudonym Therapist.

Cole later collaborated with local group Bomm Sheltuh, rapping and producing as a member of the group.

During his youth, Cole expressed an affinity for basketball and music, and served as a first-chair violinist for the Terry Sanford Orchestra until 2003.

Cole can be seen in the crowd of the 2006 documentary Dave Chappelle's Block Party.

Upon graduating high school with a 4.2 GPA, Cole decided that his chances of securing a recording contract would be better in New York City.

He moved there and accepted a scholarship to St. John's University.

Initially majoring in computer science, Cole later switched to communications after witnessing the life of a lonely computer science professor.

At the college, Cole was the president of Haraya, a pan-African student coalition.

Born on a military base in Germany and raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Cole initially gained attention as a rapper following the release of his debut mixtape, The Come Up, in early 2007.

He graduated magna cum laude in 2007, with a 3.8 GPA.

Intent on further pursuing a musical career, he signed with Jay-Z's Roc Nation in 2009 to release two additional mixtapes: The Warm Up (2009) and Friday Night Lights (2010) to further critical acclaim as he garnered a wider following.

Each of Cole's studio albums have peaked the US Billboard 200 upon release, beginning with his debut Cole World: The Sideline Story (2011) and its follow up, Born Sinner (2013).

The albums received critical acclaim and spawned hit singles including "Work Out", "Power Trip" (featuring Miguel), and "Crooked Smile" (featuring TLC)—each charted within the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100.

Despite commercial success, Cole departed from the pop-oriented sound of the albums in favor of conscious subject matter for his subsequent projects; themes of nostalgia, racial inequality, and materialism were explored respectively in his following releases: 2014 Forest Hills Drive (2014), 4 Your Eyez Only (2016) and KOD (2018).

The latter featured a then-record six simultaneous top twenty hits on the Billboard Hot 100, tying Cole's success with that of English rock band the Beatles.

His sixth album, The Off-Season (2021) was met with continued success and spawned the single "My Life" (with 21 Savage and Morray), which peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100.

Its chart success was matched by his guest appearance on the 2023 single "All My Life" by Lil Durk, and succeeded by his first song to peak the chart, "First Person Shooter" by Drake that same year.

The former also won Cole a Grammy Award for Best Melodic Rap Performance.

Self-taught on piano, Cole also acts as a producer alongside his recording career—having largely handled the production of his own projects—with credits on material for other artists including Kendrick Lamar, Janet Jackson, Young Thug, Wale, and Mac Miller, among others.

Cole has been prolific in side ventures including his own record label Dreamville Records, as well as its namesake media company and non-profit.

In January 2015, Cole began housing single mothers rent-free at his childhood home in Fayetteville.

Cole has won two Grammy Awards from seventeen nominations, a Billboard Music Award for Top Rap Album, three Soul Train Music Awards, and eight BET Hip Hop Awards.

Each of his albums—including Revenge of the Dreamers III—have been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Despite graduating, Cole would officially receive his degree during a homecoming concert in 2015, revealing that he had owed money for a library book, causing the university to hold back from granting him his degree.

Cole later worked in various part-time jobs in Fayetteville, including a working ad salesman for a newspaper, a bill collector, a file clerk, and a kangaroo mascot at a skate rink.

After becoming musically inspired by Canibus, Nas, Tupac and Eminem, Cole and his cousin worked on developing their basic understanding of rhyming and wordplay.

As well as this, they began to learn how to interpolate storytelling within their lyrics.

By 14, Cole had various notebooks filled with song ideas, however, was unable to produce beats further than sampling.

Cole's mother later purchased him the Roland TR-808 drum machine in order to further Cole's understanding of production.

Over the next three years, he began posting songs on various internet forums under the moniker Blaza, but later switched to the name Therapist.

Cole later expanded his production to create an entire CD's worth of instrumentals, and traveled to Roc the Mic Studio, hoping to play it for Jay Z while he was in recording sessions for American Gangster.

Cole waited for over three hours, before being dismissed by Jay Z. Cole later used the CD as the backdrop for his debut mixtape, The Come Up.

The label, having signed artists including JID, Ari Lennox, and EarthGang, has released four compilation albums; their third project, Revenge of the Dreamers III (2019) debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 2020 Grammy Awards.