His 2011 debut Cole World: The Sideline Story did the half-singing, half-rapping urban emotion style better than pretty much anyone following the trend at the time, topping the Billboard 200, going gold and landing him a Best New Artist Grammy nomination. Yes, it’s both not fair and horrible luck in the eyes of people who care about that sort of thing, but Cole’s quietly become a reliable, respectable choice to land in just about any soundsystem as an artist most can agree on, and he accomplishes this feat without being irritatingly mediocre. Jay-Z making him the first artist signed to his Roc Nation imprint wound up being a bigger story for Jigga himself, and Cole’s subsequent releases, while all successful and largely exceeding expectations, have somewhat had the cloud hanging overhead of his highly anticipated label-mates not having the same (or, in Jay Electronica’s case, any) output. Cole’s career milestones have always been in the unfortunate position of being immediately compared to and subsequently defined by what his contemporaries are up to.
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