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Cole recounts his friend's life story, talking about losing his dad, seeing his mother struggle with addiction and watching his dreams evaporate. 2," the album's title track is a letter to Cole's daughter and a letter to the daughter of a recently deceased friend. "4 Your Eyez Only"Ĭontinuing the themes of "She's Mine, Pt. Every bullet, every struggle that Cole discussed not only affects him, but will define the way his daughter gets to know the world. It's a transcendent, lullabic moment of calm in an otherwise tumultuous album, though it also raises the stakes of every other bar Cole spits on the album. "Am I worthy of this gift/ Am I strong enough to lift, into a place that I can see/ Someone more important than me?" he croons on the hook. The song deals with the new responsibilities of fatherhood and the meaning it's given his life. 2" is one of two tracks dedicated to the two most important people in Cole's life: his wife and his daughter. You can be great in this place and make this place great." "She's Mine, Pt.
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"I didn't necessarily have to leave Fayetteville to do what I did. "I realized the opportunity is in your mentality," he says in his 2014 Forest Hills Drive: Homecoming documentary, according to the Fayetteville Observer. The song's title is a nod to his hometown of Fayetteville, with the mentality in question being the feeling that he had to get out at all costs to achieve his dreams, despite all the disruption it would cause himself and those around him. Cole includes interludes from a girl who lost her father to gun violence, talking about the scars it left in her family. Track four, "Ville Mentality," unfolds more of the album's major themes over a shuffling soul beat. "It's that sort of thinkin' that been keepin' niggas chained/ At the bottom and hanged/ The strangest fruit that you ever seen, ripe with pain." "Ville Mentality" "They tellin' niggas sell dope, rap or go to NBA, in that order," Cole spits. But the joy of the rags-to-riches storyline is tainted by the rarity of his rise. He then winds out stories about hustling on the corner, building towards his present station. "Screamin,' dollar and a dream with my closet lookin' broke."
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"I was barely 17 with a pocket full of hope," he raps. "Immortal"Ĭole opens "Immortal," a hard-hitting stream of meditation on his position in rap and the black man's position in America, with a reminder of who he is and where he's been.
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"Tired of feeling low even when I'm high/ Ain't no way to live, do I wanna die?" Cole asks himself over soft African chimes, before answering the brutally honest question: "I don't know." It immediately sets a very different tone from the optimistic intro of 2014 Forest Hills Drive. The opener of 4 Your Eyez Only, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" channels a similar plea for freedom, this time from his own doubts and depression. He dropped "Be Free" with its plaintive sung chorus: "All we wanna do is take the chains off." In the midst of the 2014 Ferguson protests, Cole revealed another dimension of his vocal abilities: his blues voice. Here are a few breakdowns of the album's standout tracks. He takes aim at systematic and cultural racism, his coming to terms with the responsibilities of fatherhood, survivor's guilt and grief, among many of life's darker corners. The album offers a raw glimpse at the contents of Cole's mind, and for the most part he's thinking about much deeper issues than the careers of rap's heavy hitters. After even a single listen to 4 Your Eyez Only, that omission begins to make sense.