all j cole does for his hooks is recycle from old/obscure southern rappers and remake cliff note songs for gen z in the likes of project pat and lil jon or recycles a sample played at Freaknik ATL like swing my way/hood movie OSTs
the rapping is just him double dipping from being braggadocious about material things/status and then flip flopping towards being insecure or lightheaded introspective on the same song/album, like make up your damn mind../smoke some stronger weed and say some arrogant shyt that actually stands for something and people might actually respect you for having a damn opinion instead of having none...the depths of self improvement, human psychology, and relationships are endless pursuits like happiness and perfection, it's aways a hedonic treadmill and j cole can't let go of his ego to figure out something real time and rap about it but instead raps about general safe topics that nobody can argue or front on and put those topics into a song, but that shyt is boring having prepackaged microwaved raps with no substance
outside of putting words together, he doesn't stand for anything artistically one way or another and raps like some swing state politician with 'running in place jaw gymnastics' to carry on a conversation while talking about mundane black suburban stereotypes like fashion/relationships or once in a while jump on a trend to talk about racism and BLM once other rappers his generation already made a bold statement like kendrick
if you can see past his razzle dazzle wordplay, there's no thesis or message to takeaway, he often raps about both sides of the argument with no conclusion especially for relationship songs where he's the shy good dude and then wants to be an a$$hole in the same verse/song so both shy dudes and hood dudes like his songs and both of these demographics are predictably superficial with their interests and don't have the depth in life experiences or listened to enough hip hop veterans to pick apart that what he's saying is shallow
he makes shallow songs for shallow people with a bit of razzle dazzle wordplay without saying much of anything while flip flopping stances and leaves the listener confused where shy dudes would feel the need to be more arrogant and hood dudes become more soft, basically this video in a nutshell, where dude just rattles off random memorable lines and hot beats or recycled choruses from songs but can't explain how to think or change oneself one way or another after listening to his albums other than feeling emotionally confused, the end
he's basically living out his first rap name, the therapist...he explains the confusion or argues for both sides decently but didn't pass enough psychology classes to give a diagnostic. the money is in the therapy instead of the cure, so people are perpetually confused or can understand the benefits of being the polar opposite person but there's no next step or solutions told in his music outside of the shallow understanding of the problem/feelings but dive deeper in the confusion. he never jeopardized his career to take a stance or create a bold statement trying to reach or help people through his music -- he just recreates the feeling of people pursing the frat boy/teenage lifestyle dreams of girls/money/fame/baller lifestyle sprinkled with carefree ignorance or naive positivity about their future/the real world and makes music pandering to that audience. there's no details or tips or dots to connect with his music, just somehow we're going to ambiguously make it big, like a fake self help guru and then cherry pick the biggest success stories.
there's no growth in his music of who he truly is. he could say something crazy and then reform himself as a changed man like 2Pac or anybody else who goes thru phases and understanding. he just perpetually makes music for the same age bracket but doesn't really push the needle of the culture forward or just maintains the expectation of 'good hip hop' for gen z before the genre goes to shyt
he's better than most of the other acts that's out here but the bar of hip hop is set pretty low nowadays that anything intelligible becomes legend status