J Cole to release eight unheard songs for ‘2014 Forest Hills Drive’ anniversary
J Cole is celebrating the ten-year anniversary of his 2014 Forest Hills Drive album by releasing two deluxe versions. The North Carolina rapper’s third studio album will reach its decade milestone on December 9th, so he’s giving fans the chance to hear eight unreleased songs that didn’t make the final cut.
The tracks will be available on CD and vinyl versions of the album, which are available to purchase on J Cole’s website. With two new covers, one of the deluxe albums includes the songs ‘Home Soon’, ‘Die Together’, ‘Judgement Day’ and ‘Winter Wonderland’, while the other has ‘Keep Heaven Dancing’, ‘Miles’, ‘Black Man in Hollywood’ and ‘Obviously’.
2014 Forest Hills Drive debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart with 371,000 units in its first week and remains the best-selling album of his career. It also won ‘Album of the Year’ at the BET Hip Hop Awards and was nominated for ‘Best Rap Album’ at the Grammys.
In 2014, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s manager, Steve Lobel, claimed that Krayzie Bone and Bizzy Bone had recorded a track for the album, which he described as “crazy.” However, it’s currently unclear whether the collaboration is one of the songs included across the two deluxe versions.
“We just went to the studio with J Cole,” he told HipHopDX at the time. “Krayzie’s gonna be on J Cole’s new album. J Cole didn’t even know Bone’s story, how they took a Greyhound to meet Eazy [E]. Then J Cole was telling his story and Kray is like, ‘I’m gonna tell you my story.’ But we’re gonna let Cole tell it first. The record’s fucking crazy. Crazy. Bizzy [Bone] got on it, too.”
In addition to unreleased music from the 2014 Forest Hills Drive era, J Cole is also putting on a “one night only” ten-year anniversary show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The concert is set to take place on December 16th, with tickets going on sale on December 4th.
J Cole has been reminiscing on his older projects lately through his Inevitable audio series, which has found him personally deep-diving into his career. To coincide with the series, he’s officially released his early mixtapes The Come Up Vol. 1, The Warm Up and Friday Night Lights on streaming platforms for the first time.