The anticipation surrounding J. Cole’s The Fall Off album is approaching a fever pitch, as the rap star’s manager has fueled the flame by declaring that the album is one he wants to see performed in its entirety.
On Tuesday (Feb. 7), Ibrahim Hamad, Dreamville Records Co-Founder and President, replied to a tweet by Twitter account TeamDreamville asking fans which of J. Cole’s releases they’d choose to have a concert themed around. Hamad simply wrote “The Fall Off” in his response to the initial post, resulting in reactions ranging from elation to skepticism.
Announced in 2018, The Fall Off has been billed as J. Cole’s last studio album before retiring from rap. The 38-year-old artist previously laid out plans to release a succession of projects as part of “The Fall Off Era,” which initially included his 2021 release The Off-Season and another project titled It’s A Boy. Those projects would seemingly precede the premiere of The Fall Off, which has yet to receive an official release date. In 2021, Cole spoke with Slam Magazine about the origins of The Fall Off and his willingness to hang up his microphone and walk off into the sunset following its debut.
“Oh, bro, I’m super comfortable with the potential of being done with this sh*t,” the hitmaker explained at the time. “But I’m never going to say, ‘Oh, this is my last album.’ … Because I never know how I’m going to feel two years, three years, four years down the line, 10 years down the line, but please believe, I’m doing all this work for a reason.”
He added, “First it was the thought and the feeling, and I was looking for a phrase to sum that up. That was the birth of it. I found the phrase in 2016, actually, early 2016 when I was working on 4 Your Eyez Only. I found a phrase, I did the hook to the song and I was like, ‘Oh, this is the phrase that sums up this whole chapter for me.’ And that’s when I started working on The Fall Off.”
Despite not releasing a solo project last year, 2022 marked a few sightings from J. Cole, musically. He appeared on two tracks, “Stick” and “Freedom Of Speech,” from Dreamville’s D-Day: A Gangsta Grillz Mixtape and also delivered standout guest spots alongside Benny The Butcher (“Johnny P’s Caddy”) and Bia (“London”). He recently tossed out his latest track “Procrastination (Broke)” in January, which uses a beat produced by aspiring boardsman Bvtman, who he discovered on YouTube while searching for “J. Cole Beats.”
While The Fall Off may be looming, we may be getting to hear a new J. Cole tune sooner than later, as Dreamville Records recently announced that they are executive producing the Creed III soundtrack, which is slated to drop on March 3 in conjunction with the film.