Upon a first listening of J. Cole’s new album 4 Your Eyez Only, it quickly becomes clear that Cole has returned to the production style of his earliest work. There are no guest features, melodic choruses or catchy hooks, and the instrumentals are simpler, with dampened bass and softer backing vocals. Cole has suggested in past lyrics that his music is at its worst when motivated by a desire to impress, and the back to basics instrumentation of 4 Your Eyez Only therefore represents a move towards a more authentic style and a divergence from his flashier, more recent work.

At times this minimalism works in Cole’s favour: on ‘Immortal’, the simple beat permits no distractions from Cole’s lyrical proficiency and originality in dealing with racial issues and hood mentalities. On ‘Deja Vu’,  the softer, skipping instrumentals and haunting backing vocals bolster the sincerity of Cole’s underdog love story and its confused romantic and sexual intentions. However, the instrumental minimalism often gives the album a lazily produced sound; songs like ‘She’s Mine Pt. 1’, ‘Pt. 2’, and ‘Ville Mentality’ sound more like interludes than self-standing tracks, with Cole’s slow and uninteresting lyrics providing little relief from the tedium of their dull beats.

"In handling each of the album’s themes individually, Cole dances between excellence and unoriginal drabness"

This polarity in quality recurs throughout 4 Your Eyez Only. In handling each of the album’s themes individually, Cole dances between excellence and unoriginal drabness. On ‘Change’, Cole raps about growing out of an immature mindset with a level of lyricism reminiscent of his early work and a beat both classically simple and perfectly produced, yet when he talks about the same topic on ‘Ville Mentality’, the lyrics and musical backing are hopelessly boring and forgettable. The album’s love songs also deviate from soaring highs like ‘Deja Vu’ to really crippling lows: despite ‘She’s Mine Pt. 1’ and ‘Foldin’ Clothes’ being continuations of ‘Deja Vu’s’ story, neither brings anything new or interesting to the narrative, with Cole choosing ‘Foldin’ Clothes’ to be his preferred outlet to discuss house chores and his almond milk consumption.

Where the album’s thematic content really succeeds is its weaving together of different subjects into the album’s story, which deals with a young man who seeks to escape his racially oppressed neighbourhood and ultimately finds purpose by discovering first his love for a woman, and then his love for their daughter. Each track on 4 Your Eyez Only is told from the perspective of either Cole, his childhood friend James McMillan Jr, or a combination of the two. It is at times deliberately difficult to identify the narrator, as Cole and McMillan lived almost identical lives and shared similar dreams of stardom and similar loves for their daughters. James McMillan Jr, however, was shot dead at the age of 22.

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While parts of Cole’s narrative such as ‘She’s Mine Pt. 2’ and ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ lack any of the storytelling flare he exhibited on classic tracks like ‘A Tale of 2 Citiez’ and ‘Grown Simba’, they do succeed as sections of an overall story whose message is both poignant and profound. On the album’s strong closing track, the titular ‘4 Your Eyez Only’, Cole blames the racial issues in his neighbourhood and the wrongful mindsets of its occupants for McMillan’s death. Yet he accuses without aggression, in a voice of pain that tries to emphasise with McMillan’s fatherless daughter. It’s really moving.

In moments like this we get a real glimpse of Cole’s intentions on 4 Your Eyez Only, as he confronts racial problems by exposing their violent consequences and their tragic implications for an innocent child. The approach is heartbreaking, original and profound, and reminds us just how brillitant Cole can be. Sadly, too many tracks on 4 Your Eyez Only serve as mere elements of the story and lack the kind of rhythmic or lyrical content that could make them stand apart from their positions in the record. Although 4 Your Eyez Only is one of Cole’s most sincere and meaningful albums, its various lows prevent it from being his among his best