infomercials, figuring he needs to put some weight on. ItвЂ™s details like that last one that set вЂњImmortalвЂќ apart from so much of ColeвЂ™s early work: you can see the speaker bathed in the artificial light of 3 a.m. The songвЂ™s narratorВ feeds baggies through a burglar bar, watches Bic lighters wave under spoons, wakes up early to hit the Bowflex. He also comes to life on вЂњImmortal,вЂќ which sounds as if someone played Cole an unheard 2Pac song from the Makaveli sessions and then dared him to recreate it from memory. 2вЂќ is about his wife and newborn child), and the title track, which closes the album with a missive for those young girls, is anchored by his personal anxieties, making for some of ColeвЂ™s most affecting writing to date. Cole is himself a new father (вЂњSheвЂ™s Mine, Pt. The album is peppered with references to his murder, and a testimony from a young girl in Fayetteville, which appears at two points on вЂњVille Mentality,вЂќ echoes the reality faced by McMillanвЂ™s own daughter. Cole frequently invokes other points of view, including that of his late friend James McMillan, Jr., who was killed at 22. The SWAT experience, recounted on вЂњNeighbors,вЂќ the best song from ColeвЂ™s fourth album, 4 Your Eyez Only, is a grim perversion of those dreams, and it anchors a record that wrestles with the fragility of life and the importance of family ties.ДЇor long stretches, Eyez is a rumination on death. On his last solo effort-which was named after the Fayetteville house-he rapped about his adolescent fantasies of white picket fences surrounded by trees, by quiet. It wasnвЂ™t the native North CarolinianвЂ™s only property holding: heвЂ™d previously purchased his childhood home, at 2014 Forest Hills Drive in Fayetteville, with plans to turn it into a rent-free safe haven for single mothers. Instead of a grow-op, officers found a basement littered with recording equipment, the bones of a creative hideout that had filled the community with little more than some errant blunt smoke. There was no one home masked and bulletproof-vested men kept pouring inside. According to the producer Elite, helicopters vultured overhead as armed officers broke down the front door and raided the house, presumably acting on a tip from a neighbor who believed the occupants were manufacturing or selling drugs. Some time this March, a SWAT team descended on a home in a wooded, well-to-do North Carolina suburb.

4 your eyes only j cole album cover