Monday, October 19, 2009
By John Benson
When Jay-Z calls, you answer.
At least that’s what hopeful rising hip-hop artist J. Cole discovered a few months ago when Shawn Carter (aka Jay-Z), who as owner of Roc Nation records is also Cole’s boss, contacted the North Carolina native with the offer to open his fall college tour, which comes to Cleveland Thursday at the Wolstein Center.
“It was completely unexpected,” said Cole, calling from his tour bus en route to Penn State University. “I thought he was probably going to tour with someone else, like Eminem or someone like that, but when I got the call, it was a blessing. It canceled all of my other plans. I was going to do my own little college tour. And this definitely trumps that. But obviously it’s all for the good.”
It’s a unique situation for Cole, 24, who is recording his debut album, which is tentatively due out next spring.
“The idea is to leave each show with more fans than I had when I came in, which isn’t hard because 95 percent of the people probably never heard of me and aren’t familiar with me,” Cole said. “So it’s my job to wrap up as many of those people in the short set that I have just to the point when my single drops in a couple of months they say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the guy from the Jay-Z tour.’”
The last year of Cole’s life must seem surreal. The young MC came out of obscurity with his 2007 debut mixtape “The Come Up,” which quickly garnered attention from Jay-Z. Then just months after his latest mixtape “The Warm Up” hit the streets, he’s pegged to not only contribute vocals for the track “A Star is Born” on Jay-Z’s new album, “The Blueprint 3,” but also to tour with the biggest name in hip-hop. His life now mirrors that of a No. 1 draft pick with a bright-looking future.
“I do feel like that, man,” Cole said. “It’s funny, it’s true. I feel like a top pick, and I haven’t got a chance to play but yet I’m getting interviewed and all of this stuff, which is cool. But the catch comes on how you handle it. It’s like you can either be LeBron [James] or Kwame Brown. Like it can either mess you up and work against or you can handle the pressure and just respond to it and take it as a challenge. I want to do that. I want to be the LeBron.”
You know, considering the friendship between Cole’s boss Jay-Z and LeBron, odds are he’s going to cross paths with The King when the tour hits Cleveland.
“Oh yeah, I didn’t even think about that,” Cole said. “I’ll probably ask him if he wants to play one on one. Put some money on it, go beat him quick and then go join the league and give up this whole rap game.”
Look, you can do whatever you want as long as you persuade Le-Bron to stay in Cleveland.
“I personally feel that, too,” Cole said. “If you’re going to be one of the greatest, you’ve got to just be on that one team for your whole career. Or maybe when you get to be like 38, you just go try it out somewhere else and take that team to the championship. But I’m with you: Stay in Cleveland, LeBron.”