The tape introduces the label's two newest signees: the Washington, D.C.-bred singer Ari Lennox and lute, a rapper from Charlotte who joins Cole in representing North Carolina. (To be fair, that song is nearly derailed when he says he's "Horny like that Coltrane album," one of a handful of sex-centric bars that he and his Queens-bred signee Bas inexplicably cling to.) But when he's moralizing or getting somber, it's robotic, as with "Caged Bird"'s refrain, "Freedom's just an illusion/ That's my conclusion." On "Crystals," he punctuates a particularly intense, clumsy passage with, "So you can take my cock and chew on it," a line that needs a wink or some levity to redeem itself, but is given neither.įumbled legacy-building though it is, Dreamers is not without its bright spots. Cole's always been at his best when the stakes are low, or at least self-contained when he's rapping for its own sake, or reveling in the fact that he signed his friends ("Night Job"), he can be a well above-average technician. That kind of toothless penmanship might slide if it weren't delivered so deliberately. But in Cole's more serious writing, most of that personal touch is filtered out, replaced by blunt aphorisms: "'Cause still I rise, it's ill-advised to bet against him/ Raised in hell but heaven sent him/ Let 'em diss him." (As always, his rapping on Revenge owes more to the latter locale.) His plan to turn his childhood home-on Forest Hills Drive-into a shelter where single mothers can live rent-free is not just admirable, but is a sincere, inspired way to alleviate the conditions he grew up in and around. native has detailed his experiences in schools with various socioeconomic makeups, including his time at St.
In many ways, his background is remarkable the Fayetteville, N.C. Take the opener, "Folgers Crystals," where Cole compares himself to Bob Marley and Nat Turner in the first handful of bars. His performance on a song-by-song basis from his debut, Cole World: The Sideline Story, to last December's 2014 Forest Hills Drive oscillates wildly, but never shakes the feeling that it's checking boxes, doing X because Kanye did and Y because Pac did. The problem with Revenge of the Dreamers II, beyond the absence of a " This Can't Be Life" or a " Dipset Anthem," is the same as the problem with much of Cole's solo catalog: In his desperation to be canonized beside his idols, he shies away from the risks they took to earn those spots. Nor does it have the slick condescension of any Bad Boy collaboration, the virtuosity of Soundbombing, the knowing sneer of anything the Diplomats made on their worst day.
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So let's do that: Revenge of the Dreamers II, the new nine-song compilation from his Interscope imprint, Dreamville Records, is not The *Dynasty-*it doesn't have the color, the heart-wrenching personal asides, the 1-900 numbers that teach you how to sell crack. Cole has made it abundantly clear that he wants to be judged alongside rap's all-time greats.
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