HBD Jermaine: 30 Quotes J. Cole Has Gifted The World

January 28, 2015 - 2:44 pm by Richy Rosario

J. Cole may have let Nas down but the Born Sinner has gems in the stash when it comes to this here thing called life. Turning 30 today (Jan. 28), the North Carolina rapper has been on a mission to be a god MC, recently pushing out arguably his best LP to date, 2014 Forest Hills Drive. Here, we’ve dusted off some of the Dreamville captain's most insightful, revealing and humbling quotes. Sallie Mae couldn't even touch this.

1. "When I got to high school, becoming cool was way more important. In retrospect, it’s just some high school shit. It was more like, ‘OK, how do I figure out how to get these girls?’ I started dressing better. I still had a little bit of the class clown in me, but high school, it was such a new thing for me, I didn’t have that same spirit that I had in middle school. In middle school, I was a little star.” —GlobalGrind, August 2013

2. “People I grew up with tell me it’s getting worse. I don’t know if that has to do with the economy or if the education is getting worse. On the flipside, Fayetteville has some heroes now—even if they’re rappers or athletes… It sucks that these things have to come from sports and entertainment, but it’s something for kids to look up to and say, 'Somebody from here did something.' I don’t want to inspire kids to rap. I want to let them know that anything they want to do is possible. I come from here and did some shit that was impossible, so if you want to be an astronaut, lawyer, doctor, writer, journalist, or whatever, I want to inspire you to do that.” —Complex, Dec 2014/ Jan 2015

3. “If you could imagine a town called Dreamville, which is really to me, a mixture of my hometown Fayetteville and the city of dreams, New York. So it’s like this fictional town where the story takes place and within this setting there’s all these different aspects of life. Whether it’s the main character’s issues, family issues, relationship issues and then there’s this whole other issue of him trying to accomplish his goals. Prison issues, family members locked up. I see it like a movie.” —VIBE, May 2010

4. “There’s some shit that’s way more important than how many albums I sell and if I’m the best… You have no control over what somebody else feels about you, but you have 100 percent control over how you feel about yourself and how you feel about the people around you and how you handle life. I became happier and started to deal with shit more, not run from the feelings.” —Complex, Dec 2014/ Jan 2015

5. “If it wasn’t for Jay-Z they wouldn’t even be talking about me…so until I put out an album, make a classic, put out hit singles, I’m gonna be Jay-Z’s artist. But the only thing that’s gonna get me out of his shadow is building my own personal shadow.” —XXL, Oct 2009

6. “I feel like I am officially in the game, but I also feel like I’m not where I want to be. I’m far from it. I got a lot more things to do. I got a lot more respect to get…Kanye [West] and Jay-Z are doing arenas. I got a long way to go before I can do an arena. I want to perform in an arena or stadium one day, depending on how big this thing gets. An arena? That’s 20,000 people coming to see you. To do a tour of arenas and then headlining that? That’s incredible. So I’ve got a long way to go. I know I got a long way to go.” —YRB, Dec 2011

7. “I want to be a great artist first, and as good of a businessman as I can be without taking away from my art form. I’ve been through worrying about a hit and it forcing me to make [a certain] type of song because I got all this pressure. Business is only satisfying in the security of it and the fact that the better I am at business, the better I am at providing for my family. Business moves don’t bring me happiness. The things the business moves provide bring me happiness.” —Complex, Dec 2014/ Jan 2015 8. “To be good at bill-collecting, you have to ignore your feelings. I remember sitting there on the phone, listening to people tell me that they're losing their house, that their husband has cancer, and then I'm supposed to ask them if they have $50? I couldn't do that shit. Sometimes I would just listen to their stories and then say, 'I'm sorry, have a good day.' I couldn't even ask them for the money! And if a person didn't give you any money over the phone, you were supposed to schedule them back into the system so they would get another call in two weeks, but for a lot of people, like when you could really hear the pain in their voices, I would schedule them really far into the future. Months.” —Interview Magazine, 2013 9. “Artists that go to Hollywood and live their lives for the cameras, the attention, they’re supplementing for their lack of love, their holes…Wanting to be a movie star, wanting to be a rap star, wanting to have jewelry, wanting to have girls, and wanting to have money, all that shit is just trying to plug those holes. It’s dangerous because it’s not real.” —Complex, Dec 2014/ Jan 2015 10. “I graduated magna cum laude. And after college, man, that was... Well, I was broke as hell. I was renting an apartment in Queens with my roommates during school, and after we graduated, they moved out and started their careers. I didn't really have a career at that point.”—Interview Magazine, 2013 11. “Barack Obama would not be President if he were dark skin. You know what I mean? That’s just the truth. I might not be as successful as I am now if I was dark skin. I’m not saying that for sure, I’m still as talented as I am and Obama is still as smart as he is, but it’s just a sad truth… I don’t even know if this is going to translate well into text and people not hearing what I’m saying, but it’s a sad reality. So I can only naturally assume it’s probably easier for a light skin male rapper than it might be for a dark skin male rapper. It’s all subconscious shit, nobody’s aware — I think that shit still subconsciously affects us.” —BET, August 2013 12. “There was the time I bought three cars in the span of three or four weeks. It was crazy; it wasn't greedy. It was mine, my girl's, my mom's. I got Benzes for my ladies. But I felt crazy. You have to understand I come from a world where we're very modest. But that's not greedy. That's nice, right?" —Spin, June 2013

13. “I just feel like, with rappers, there's so much complacency. It's like, "Oh, I'm a rapper. I'm successful. I make money. That's all that matters." But there's a lot of stuff going on in the world. Whether or not you're aware of it, it's happening. This is one of the best platforms to actually reach people and to make them look at the world a different way. Tell people something aside from how much money you have and how much better your girl looks than my girl. Give them more to think about.” —Elle, June 2013 14. “I can’t do regular shit anymore. And I definitely enjoyed regular shit. I’m a regular dude. I’m not one of those guys that like his whole life was training to be a rapper. I got friends that haven’t made it yet and their whole lives they been rappers, since they were 12, 13 years old, niggas been callin’ them by their rap names. That wasn’t me, I’ve always just been Jermaine, and rap was my alter ego… And I definitely enjoyed regular life and now that shit is pretty much wrapped up. So fuck it, I’ll do this other shit for the time being.” —Noisey Vice, March 2013 15. “I don’t have throwaway joints. So if I put out a mixtape it’s going to be better than somebody’s album. If I’m serving you a meal, I don’t want to give you an appetizer that’s just as filling as the meal. I’d rather give you a banging-ass meal and then possibly come with some good-ass dessert.” —VIBE, May 2010 16. “I believe deeply in the things that I believe in. And if you know me, you know I'm passionate about these things. I'm talking about 'em everyday. But at the same time, I'm not a lawyer. I don't know the law. I'm not a historian. I'm not equipped on my history. I know a little bit, probably more than somebody, but I'm not — I don't feel like the best candidate to be the voice of the generation. You know what I mean? In a sense. Even if people look at it like, "Oh, man." I'm like — so maybe that's what they risk. Is like, they don't feel —Equipped, maybe.” —NPR, Dec 2014 17. "My most prideful moment probably happened in the moment I had the number one album in the country [2011's Cole World: The Sideline Story]. I felt like I shitted on a lot of people's expectations at that moment."—Spin, June 2013 18. “If the mind does work like that, in patterns, then stereotypes would be natural…but I can meet somebody that’s like Puerto Rican, 19 and have genuine interactions with this type of person to the point where I know them. My patterns and my stereotypes about this type of person are a little bit more informed. They’re still not all the way accurate…but a little more well informed than a whole bunch of people in this world who have never had real interactions with 19 year-old Puerto Ricans or with young black males or black people period. Or minorities period. Or gays. The problem is most people’s opinions of these people they’ve never met… the information is given through stereotypes that already exist in the media.” —The Fader, Nov 2014

19. “I know what it is like to lose a home you grew up in. It was foreclosed on when I was 18. I bought it back for closure. I remember when we moved in, and it was such an unreal feeling having a front yard and a backyard, my own room. My idea is that I want to give that privilege to someone else [and let a poor family live there through his foundation]. I want some kid to have that same feeling.” —The New York Times, Nov 2014 20. “Lately, I’ve realized that I’ve seen more of America than many Americans. I’ve seen it from growing up dirt poor in a small city like Fayetteville, to my mother getting married and being somewhat middle class, to going to college in a major city like NYC, A lot of my friends didn’t see that life. I met so many different types of people. It’s totally different from where I’m from. But in terms of being a great writer or great thinker, you don’t really need college for that. But my college experience gave me a viewpoint that no one else is talking about. I rap like a young black man who went to college. But I still do all the nigga shit that niggas do.“ —Noisey, July 2014 21. “The system, the people at the top love the fact that everybody is so busy with themselves and their own lives that they don’t have the time to stand for something or to fight for something.” —Power 105.1, Dec 2014 22. “It’s hard to fight for other people when you’re trying to fight to survive yourself. Being a black male in America, you become numb. There’s so much news about police violence and black-on-black crime and racial profiling, nothing can really surprise you anymore. But [after the deaths of several black men at the hands of police around the country, including the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.], I forced myself to face it. I was breaking down crying, fed up.” —The New York Times, Nov 2014 23. “If I’m speaking my mind and saying how I truly feel, I might say one thing that connects the dots for somebody that might have been the right connection that was needed to do something to change the world.” —Power 105.1, Dec 2014 24. "They say you got your whole life to make your first album. For me, I had to give so much of my life stories, so much of my rhymes on the mixtapes The Come Up, The Warm Up and Friday Night Lights. My first album was like my fourth. I had a conversation with Jay after I played him “Let Nas Down,” and the nigga was like, “I got to figure my shit out on Vol. 1.; I already had my classic Reasonable Doubt in the stash.” To me, “Work Out” was successful, and I’m happy for it. But it was still me learning how to balance. I gave you “Crooked Smile,” I gave you “Power Trip.” That’s how you maintain yourself. When Jay did “Sunshine,” that was a learning lesson. They play that right now, the nigga would probably run out of the room. But he probably wouldn’t have been able to make “Hard Knock Life” had he not tried to make “Sunshine.”" —VIBE, Summer 2013

25. "Our worlds have a lot more in common than people want to think. Stereotypes prevent the worlds from colliding and connecting more. The powers that be like it like that. They like it that the cultures don't mix, because if they ever were to mix, they would realize they're in the same boat and have a lot more in common than they have differences." —ESPN Magazine, Jan 2015 26. “When Flava of Love came out and this whole reality show wave started, I was the kid in college like ‘Why the fuck y’all watching this shit? Y’all know this shit is evil. How they going to call this reality TV when this shit is clearly scripted and they portraying us like this. The stereotypes are obvious.' I was always that kid that was like ‘Why is it like this?’ Now that I’m getting older, I’m understanding that is one thing to have that passion, but I’m trying to arm myself with the knowledge and prospective to grasp where we really at. Knowledge is power. I see that. Young, black men have power. We are in control of our own destiny. We can decide to no longer be victims.” —The Combat Jack Show, Jan 2015 27. "We all slaves to something." —NPR, Dec 2014 28. "There was a time in my life when I gave a fuck. Every chance I got I was screaming about it. I was younger. It’s so easy to try to save the world when you’re in college. You got nothing but time and no responsibility. But soon life hits you. No more dorms, no more meal plan, no more refund check. Nigga need a job. Nigga got rent. Got car note. Cable bill. Girlfriend moves in and becomes wife. Baby on the way. Career advances. Instagram is poppin. Lebron leaves Miami. LIFE HITS. We become distracted. We become numb. I became numb. But not anymore. That coulda been me, easily. It could have been my best friend. I’m tired of being desensitized to the murder of black men. I don’t give a fuck if it’s by police or peers. This shit is not normal." —"Be Free," August 2014 29. “Everybody has problems. That's one thing that unites us: We have good kids and bad kids. Everybody got bad kids -- black and white, rich and poor. Everybody got good kids. I feel like people that look like me and dress like me are often painted as being that bad kid, when in actuality if you got to know us, you would know we're just like your children." —ESPN Magazine, Jan 2015 30. "You'll never have enough success, if success is what you seek. You'll always be reaching. And I realize that if you're trying to attain something that's unattainable, you will never be happy. You will always be in a pattern of temporary happiness and satisfaction. Like, "Oh, I got it. I got it." And then right before you know it, you be like, "Ah. I need another raise. Ah. I need another business. Ah. I need another million. Ah. I need another Grammy." You know what I mean? And I realized that I had to — I gotta put my happiness — I gotta base my happiness on what I have. Which is the people I have in my life, the love I have in my life, the – just the moments I have. You know, the simplest things." —NPR, Dec 2014

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