Roc Nation’s youngest (and finest) sat down to write Honey a personal journal entry during his bid on Jay-Z’s current Blueprint 3 Tour.
Dear Honey:
I have officially lost track of time. One thing about being on tour is that every other day you find yourself in a different time zone, and keeping up is too difficult. So it’s currently 11:20 pm EST and that’s all I care about! Right now, I’m laid up in the back of the tour bus on the way to Austin, TX. My album (so far) is playing in the background. Mannn. That’s all I can say.
Performing in front of a packed arena with close to 20,000 people is ... like having sex with the baddest chick, but bustin’ in one minute!
Shout out to everybody at Honey and everybody reading! They’ve been on my ass about writing a journal for ya’ll, so here we go. I’m just gonna jot whatever comes to mind as it comes. This reminds me of college. Damn, I miss school!
What can I say about touring? A blessing and a learning experience first and foremost. I’m opening up the show every night in front of a more-than-half-empty crowd, trying to win them over. After four weeks, I can say I’ve already grown 200 percent as a performer. There wasn’t a night that I didn’t learn something new about what I should or shouldn’t be doing on stage. With experience comes confidence. With confidence comes … dominance! I just thought of that.
The best part of each night is that I get to come back on stage for Hov’s set and do my verse on “Star is Born.” Performing in front of a packed arena with close to 20,000 people is a rush every time. I never wanna get off the stage. Every night I walk off, I think “Damn, that’s like having sex with the baddest chick, but bustin’ in one minute!” Yea it was fun, but it’s not enough. Seeing Jay’s set every night, I now understand that the only way to get to that level is to have classics and consistent hits. It just adds fuel to my drive.
Last night in LA was a cool experience. It’s not unusual to see stars come out to watch the show. So far I met Lebron [James], Shaq [O’Neal], Dave Chappelle and some other people at shows here and there. But the LA show? Let me try to name who was backstage: Jamie Foxx, Usher, Lupe (cool as fuck), Rihanna, Taraji P. Henson, Tyrese, Michael Rapaport, MC Lyte, Lauren London, Solange, and some dude that looked like Travis Barker … Now, I’m not a name-dropper and I don’t run and twitter (@jcolenc) about the famous people I meet. All I’m trying to do is set the scene for ya’ll so I can say this. Just off of observation, the entertainment industry seems like a big ass high school, and I feel like the new nigga in class. Ha! Right now I’m not interested in socializing though, I’m just tryna get my work done.
So far …
The best crowd: Ottawa, Ontario. Canada was crazy.
The best food: D.C., on our day off. The soul food spot Oooh’s and Ahhh’s
The best women: Toronto. The rumors were true.
The best after-party: Eastern Michigan, a lil party we stumbled upon in Ann Arbor.
Cleanest city: Montreal, Quebec. Shout out to the cab driver that found my phone and somehow linked back up with me.
I’m grateful to be able to experience this. Hopefully see ya’ll on tour in the future.
J. Cole
I just listened to The Warm Up today. I love it and I’m looking forward to what’s next for J.Cole…
P.S. I really like the idea of a journal entry. It’s so fitting for a young artist on tour for the first time.
Cole keep pushing my dude keep pushing i would love to see a video for the girl of my dreams.
love seeing J. Cole’s star shining brighter everyday.
when ya coming to the A?
Im so proud of J.cole ….definetly rooting for him…The warm up mixtape is on heavy rotation on my ipod
I love you and your music it really portrays a real man who had to start at the bottom to rise to the top…all ur music is dope and amzing what you say opens my eyes to the true meaning of hip hop…ur my fave rapper and i pray and hope the best for u to continue to come up. Please come to Oklahoma sometime ill come support u and show u around
good ish. keep on grinding son and i’ll be on the lookout for the official album. are you doing any shows for CIAA in feb?
yo cole im from toronto canada check this out for real http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUvZGziWyv8
j.cole i love yuhr music , it has my mindd blowinn . str8 upp , see im from brooklynn , bhut im leaninn in jacksonville rite now , so what im sayinn is hopp down here so we cann show yuh madd love too hunn !
aww man where do i start with this guy? i’ll start 1st by saying… “niceeeee”, then i’ll add how much of a …… he is, i’ll also like to add…..