Hold up...
Brehs in here doubting a musician who has shown he's speaking from a genuine place...about whether he "considered selling"?
Every breh who got into the underbelly of the hood was a good person at one point. Stop with this narrative that we are "demons" by nature.
I was a young boy growing up w/ 2 loving parents in Fort Greene during the late 80's into the 90's... I saw dudes hustling, I saw the women with them & luckily I was enthralled by it but maybe my structure & support system helped me not get trapped into that.
Honestly, the idea of him reminiscing on the 03 Adolescent song... That was almost exactly parallel to a talk I had w/ my big brother.
He was my half brother who dropped out of high school & BECAME a street dude... I told him I wanted to be like him... I could remember clear as day him saying, "Nah, you don't want to be like me, you're going to be better than me, big brother." He started calling me big brother after that even though he was 10 years older than me.
That changed my whole trajectory.
I say that to say... I felt this music. It hit me. And our communities need this to be the standard. If it were, much like the first ipod, the new artists coming after the Kendrick's & Cole's would perfect it & be better at a more accurate snapshot into the mind & life of Black youth.
When will we realize that bars like...
"I think I hate nikkas, I'm a nazi" - Defloaf
"Pull up up in a hooptie like we cops on em" - Bobby Shmurda
"Got your girl tip-toeing on my marble floors" - Rick Ross
Where is the average young black man living this life? Breaking it down... honestly, this violent shyt...most young black men do not want to actively or seek out hurting another black man. We won't back down from anyone, but this having a bloodlust to exact harm?
And having a bytch tip-toeing on my marble floors... although I did partake in the game of fukking the next dude's girl in my early adulthood... the lavish shyt mainly appeals more to a Wolf of Wall Street, not your average young Black man.
I truly praise the breh Cole for trying to create levity in OUR music.
For that...I rock with him.