The Beatles album that inspired J Cole’s ‘2014 Forest Hills Drive’
J Cole‘s 2014 Forest Hills Drive, often considered the rapper’s best album, is celebrating its 10th anniversary after being released in December 2014. The title of the LP refers to the address of his childhood home in Fayetteville, North Carolina until 2003, where he lived with his mother, brother and stepfather. It was also an important location for Cole career-wise, being the first place he considered a career as a lyricist.
During an episode of his Inevitable audio series, Cole opened up about the creation of his third studio album, recalling his early morning workouts around Runyon Canyon Park in Los Angeles. “I’d wake up in the morning, put on some shorts [and go through] the alternate entrance for Runyon Canyon,” he said. “It’s this ill little back entrance that nobody uses where you can walk from the crib to this little park area, and then you can scale up the side of the mountain.”
He continued, “The first time I did it, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I should do this.’ ‘Cause the shit was kinda steep. I ain’t never scaled no mountain before! … Every day we’d go up from that little side and do Runyon Canyon backwards.”
Cole went on to reveal that The Beatles’ classic 1969 album Abbey Road was one of his daily soundtracks at the time, as well as Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below from 2003. “Every day, the albums that I would run to and listen to were Abbey Road by The Beatles and The Love Below by André 3000,” he said. “Bro, literally every fucking day playing these albums. That was my routine. Come back to the crib, maybe jump in the pool or the shower, eat, go down and meditate in my little spot and then go to the studio and start working.”
Abbey Road, home to hit singles like ‘Something’, ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and ‘Come Together’, served as The Beatles’ penultimate album and remains one of the best-selling albums of all time. In 2018, Cole managed to tie a record set by The Beatles for 54 years by occupying six positions in the top 20 of the Hot 100 chart.
In 2011, Cole named his ten favourite albums of all time during an interview with Complex, but The Beatles weren’t one of them. His list included Michael Jackson’s Bad, Nas’ Illmatic, UGK’s Ridin’ Dirty, the Fugees’ The Score, 2Pac’s Me Against the World, All Eyez on Me and Makaveli, Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Jay-Z’s The Blueprint, Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter and Kanye West’s The College Dropout.
Cole has praised The College Dropout on a number of occasions, calling it a “life-changing” album for him around the time he was was starting off his career. “The first time I heard Kanye rap was on ‘Champions,’ but the first time I saw him and figured out who he was was when the ‘Through the Wire’ video came out,” he said. “That was the summer before I went to school, in June of 2002. From that moment, I was like, ‘This n*gga is the truth.’ I was instantly addicted to the music.”