Way Back: Friday Night Lights (2010)
“Last year the cashier told me my card was not approved
Now I’m tippin' the server a hundred to show my gratitude”
-J. Cole on “Cost Me A Lot”
On November 12th, 2010, J. Cole released his third mixtape Friday Night Lights. This would come more than a year after revealing he’d been signed by Roc Nation. By this point, the hype for his work was increasing rapidly. He showed great promise on his first two mixtapes and would be expected to continue preparing fans for an eventual album.
The first actual song illustrates Cole and the duality of his career better than any other song. On one hand you have a supremely gifted MC who can wax poetic on the most serious of topics. You also have one who can grow distracted in the same verse and revert to bars about relationships/women.
J. Cole at the 2010 BET Awards prior to the release of Friday Night Lights.
Over a smooth Erykah Badu sample, he starts with an awkward metaphor connecting school lunch with life. By the end of the verse, he’s sympathizing with a chick staying in a relationship for the kids. There’s no correlation between the two ideas, but both topics are heavy enough to have their own songs. He just doesn’t give either one enough depth. Ironically, the song is called “Too Deep For the Intro”, but this was the surface level version of Cole parading as a complex lyricist. The next verse is somehow about losing his virginity. Go figure.
On “Before I’m Gone” , Cole finds his pace while speaking to the ills of his old community and his pride in getting out while still representing it.
It’s hard to separate Cole from his mixtape contemporaries, Wale and Drake. All three skilled rappers built long careers on popular mixtapes during that time. Some of that popularity stems from their tendency to write songs for the ladies. Cole recruited each of them to feature on some of the project’s softer songs, “You Got It” and “In The Morning”.
The highlights are “Enchanted”, “Blow Up”, and “Cost Me A Lot”. These tracks have more of a serious tone and feature the best version of Cole. It’s the energy of somebody on the verge of superstardom. In “Enchanted” he illustrates how impactful 90’s hip-hop culture was during his upbringing.
Just a small town nigga, big city hustle
Glued to the TV, Jigga, Diddy, Russell
Like most of the project, he produced “Cost Me A Lot”, and brings historical context to justify why he believes black people like to flaunt and wear flashy things.
Cause how I’m supposed to shine without the proper bling
Remember when I did a show with Waka Flocka Flame
Felt naked cause the boy rocked about a thousand chains
Guess we rock a lot of ice cause we got a lot of pain
The end of this series of mixtapes marked the end of this J. Cole. He’d never be underrated, unsung, or an underdog in rap ever again. The overall sound of the music would change too, but he left us enough on Friday Night Lights to show that he was always ready for the big time.
