J Cole reveals his issue with hip-hop in the streaming era
J Cole has opened up about his problem with hip-hop in the era of streaming.
The Fayetteville rapper released his new album, The Fall-Off, in February, and is currently doing interviews after letting fans sit with the project for a while.
During his recent appearance on Lost in Vegas, Cole claimed that there’s no longer a “barrier of entry” for fans, believing it’s too easy for people to listen to music.
He stated that listeners who don’t care about an artist’s music will simply listen to speak about it on social media.
“An album drops. A conversation happens,” he began. “You don’t even give a fuck about this artist. You never loved this artist, you don’t even really care about this genre, you’re not educated in the space, you just see a conversation happening.”
He continued, “And you want to be a part of the conversation, so, ‘Lemme go listen to such and such’s album… I didn’t do no work to actually get to this album and to have an opinion.'”
Cole went on to claim that some people don’t have the right to have an opinion because they didn’t give it proper attention.
“If I didn’t like an album when I bought that shit on CD, guess what? I got the right to not like this bitch because I spent $15.99,” he said. “I got the right, and now I can have a conversation with somebody else that spent their $15.99.”
He added, “If you didn’t spend $15.99, you can’t even talk to me about this album. We can’t have the conversation. You didn’t do the work, you didn’t make any type of investment.”