On June 15, 2009, J. Cole released his second mixtape, The Warm Up, which helped to catalyze his rise in the hip-hop genre.
“10 years ago The Warm Up dropped,” he began. “Thanks 2 all that have listened 2 the foundation of my whole journey. My catalogue on streaming services don’t even look right until this & FNL are up. Workin on it. Decade later and I’m still dreaming and tryna get better. God Bless.”
Spanning 22 tracks, The Warm Up boasts melodies like “Lights Please,” “Losing My Balance,” “The Badness” with Dreamville cohort Omen, and “Grown Simba.” With “Lights Please,” Cole credited that melody with landing him a Roc Nation contract. “The best part about it is, when he’s feeling something, when there’s a line that he likes, he gives you that, ‘Wooooooo!’ and he’ll let you know that he’s feeling it,” he said in a 2009 interview with Complex. “It’s a three-hour meeting and we only played five songs, so the rest of the time, we’re talking and building, you know, talking about Obama and sh*t. Then three weeks later I got the confirmation text that said he wanted to do the deal. And we just went from there.”
In May 2019, Cole celebrated another milestone when his third studio album, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, went triple platinum. The feat also publicized the fact that every album Cole has released (five albums thus far) turned platinum.
10 years ago The Warm Up dropped. Thanks 2 all that have listened 2 the foundation of my whole journey.
My catalogue on streaming services don’t even look right until this & FNL are up. workin on it.
Decade later and I’m still dreamin and tryna get better. God Bless
— J. Cole (@JColeNC) June 15, 2019
