Deon, Toronto recording artist, recently released his first mixtape titled Love & Dreams. The mixtape features Deon laying his thoughts, perspectives and experiences to songs originally recorded by Adele, John Mayer, Demi Lovato, Dweli, J. Cole and Jill Scott. Although the content of the mixtape matches it's title you can't help but pick up a nostalgic feeling while listening to it but that's not to say it's a bad characteristic. Deon shows a great amount of potential and expect a lot of great content from this artist. To further add on, there's something about his instrumental selection that intrigues me, it's great to say the least. The greatest plus about his mixtape is that it's enjoyable and very smooth.
Back to the German born Fayetteville, North Carolina resider who has worked his way to becoming one of the best word-smiths in the Hip Hop community. J. Cole is often compared to Nas, despite being Jay-Z's Protege, and in fact the comparisons to the Queensbridge living legend are quite right. Cole presents a confident flow packed with witty figurative speech that leaves listeners nodding their heads, pausing and rewinding his music. He finds a way to analyze his feelings that is undeniably heartfelt and create an elemental bond with his listeners.
J. Cole is quite the prospect. He is symbolized as the one artist who will finally bring back intelligence and creativity to the Hip Hop mainstream world. He still has a long way to go. He needs to find his way into the radar of mainstream with out selling out and maintaining his unique identity. He had the perfect opportunity to and here's how he passed it up.
One of my favorite songs by J. Cole is titled "In The Morning" and recently he released a remix that features Drake. The theme of the song goes hand to hand with the vibe provided by the instrumental. This is one of those songs that when you listen to it, you imagine a video for it. You visualize yourself in this video.
The video released definitely wasn't what I expected. I was in fact greatly disappointed that two artists of their potential would release such a visually weak video. Drake has a resume of releasing uncreative videos except for "Find Your Love" (we're still waiting for the continuation). I didn't think that J. Cole was going to disappoint the same way.
Is music really as strong as it's visuals? Yes, there are times where the video completes the music. Look at Michael Jackson's "Remember The Time" and understand that visuals should be as important as the actual music. I know that mentioning Michael Jackson isn't a fair comparison but J. Cole truly has the potential to be someone with a great legacy. Let's hope that his other songs such as, "Light's Please" and "Higher" receive a better treatment.
J. Cole and Drake - In The Morning Remix
I still prefer the original version of the song over the remix.
