J. Cole

Raised on 2Pac, Biggie, Nas, and JAY-Z, J. Cole emerged in the 2010s as a torchbearer for serious hip-hop. He takes on capital-T topics with an earnestness—and moral imperative—that most modern rappers avoid. A North Carolina native, Cole moved to New York City on scholarship to St. John’s University, graduating magna cum laude while making beats on the side—at one point waiting outside JAY-Z’s studio for three hours to give him a CD. Jay dismissed him initially but circled back later on the strength of Cole’s mixtapes, making him the first signee to the Roc Nation label. Even after making his deeply personal 2014 album 2014 Forest Hills Drive a strictly guest-free affair, he has proven to be as deft a team player across collaborations as he is when having the court all to himself. Cole has since released a string of ambitious, increasingly confident albums, often meditating on single subjects at length: 2018’s KOD offered a sustained look at addiction, while several songs on 2016’s 4 Your Eyez Only were written from the perspective of a friend killed after leaving the drug game. Despite the gravity of his subjects and his sobering delivery, Cole is the rare artist who’s managed to reconcile the conscious with the commercial. And he’s well-aware of the legacy status he has worked so hard for: Early on in 2024’s Might Delete Later, he calls himself a “hall of famer, hungrier than all the newcomers” and then proceeds to prove it yet again.