Student Choses topic #1 Andrew Ours

 When I think about the music that resonate the most with me I always turn to the Friday Night Lights mixtape by J. Cole. The mixtape is about Jermaine Cole’s experience playing basketball, chasing after girls and growing up in Fayetteville, North Carolina. For me, I grew up playing in the gym playing basketball and for a lot of years that’s all I really knew or cared about. What I appreciate about the mixtape is that J. Cole had the same experience chasing the hoop dream, but like myself it was never achieved. This is a source of inspiration because he found his real passion in life, rap but he never forgot growing up with a basketball in his hands. The album is very prophetical because J. Cole really hadn’t become immensely popular like he is today, but the tone and conviction in his bars made the listener believe he was the best MC to ever do it. This is personified in the song Premeditated Murder. Cole personifies being the best rapper in the world to murder, but more specifically he says, “Premeditated Murder” because of all the preparation and years that he has been working towards the goal. In J. Cole’s career, his flow and poetry has transcended to more mature narratives. But I will always admire most his mixtape when he was reminiscing on his time as a boy with a ball in his hands. 

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