DELISA In May 2021, J. Cole released his 6th album
‘The Off-Season,’ a culmination of his most intentional work to date and the sheer
power of committing to the craft.
DELISA: The Off Season has become the prolific rapper’s sixth straight album to go number 1 - a true
testament to the artist’s dedication to the game.
MEDIA The vision, I finally got this shit sculpted
and I can see this shit. For a long time I knew what I wanted to do but I couldn’t
see it. This is the most ambitious shit I’ve ever done.
DELISA The album art features a calm Cole with a
fiery basketball hoop behind him - evoking a feeling of dedication and persistence - while
To get a closer look, Genius sat down with Felton Brown and photographer
Justin Francis. It’s Brown’s job as VP of Creative Services at Dreamville to see
Cole's vision.
FELTON BROWN: I feel like this space for my interpretation of what we pulled together is,
I don't want to say an ending but more like now what's the next step?
It's kind of like building to destroy and then
moving on to something bigger and better.
DELISA: And he tapped Francis to be the eye behind the lens for the big project.
JUSTIN FRANCIS: The second I saw his name pop up on the phone, I said all right. Let's get
into it. Let's talk about the details. From there, let me help not only just sort of execute
the vision but also solve the problems because those two often go hand-in-hand.
DELISA A 2012 image of LeBron James during the Olympics
served as inspiration during the first iterations of the artwork’s concept. That still ended
up being the emphasis of the short film featuring Cole’s Dreamer Puma deal but the team decided
to take the ethos of the off season more literally by focusing on the fundamentals.
BROWN Cole has these drills that he does when he writes.
MEDIA: Let me try to reach new heights from a skill level standpoint. Remember I told you about
the 7 minute drill? I put myself through drills, I really try to work on my craft, and reach
new heights and push myself.
BROWN: So we have to keep the sports theme but we can't make it feel or look like anything
else that we've already put into the world.
DELISA: ‘The Off Season’ serves as Cole's latest basketball themed album rollout. From The
Warm Up in 2009 to today’s body of work in 2021, there’s a definitive progression
in skill and artistry.
BROWN I feel like, in that time, even just from
a fan perspective, I feel like he wasn't super all the way well-rounded yet as an artist,
but he was dead nice, and he was just really sharp with his pen.
The beginning of ‘Warm Up,' he's outside in the snow and then we get
FRANCIS: The fact that we're here talking about burning a hoop ... Maybe
it's the end of an era. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just the continuation of this really
kind of long-running theme.
A lot of people are talented. A lot of people can warm up a beat. But to really have that focus and
have that sort of larger vision over basically a decade, if not more, work, that
speaks a lot to his overall vision as an artist.
DELISA: To make the vision come to life, there was a great deal of faith that came into play.
Finding the perfect location to capture the feel while also meeting production standards
wasn’t an easy task.
FRANCIS: Imagine going to a location owner and being like, "Hey, yep. Is it cool if we shoot something
here? We're not going to tell you who the artist is. We're not going to tell you what
we're shooting, but we do need to light something on fire." Not a lot of people are going to
sign up for that.
DELISA: Even after securing the space, both Justin and Felton weren’t entirely convinced but
they took it as fuel to drive harder and do whatever it took to make the dream come to fruition.
FRANCIS: Earlier in that week, we saw scout photos of the place we ended up shooting, and then
Felton and I were like, "Nah, you guys got to keep looking." We didn't see it at first.
When you drive up in the middle of the day, you're like, "What am I doing in this
parking lot?" How are we going to convince Cole that this is the exact right spot to
do this shoot. BROWN: And it's going to look great. Right.
BROWN: You got to see it inside your head.
FRANCIS: It just gave us that much more homework and made sure that we had to
try that much harder to make it good.
DELISA The nonchalant expression on Cole’s face
contrasts the most temperamental object on set - the flames.
Incorporating fire into a production adds an extra presence in the mix - one that’s
difficult to control.
FRANCIS: it's so hard to get the level of smoke right timed with
how the hoop is burning. A lot of times it was like, oh, this was perfect while that
was fading. Or that was way too heavy while that was getting right.
As you know, there's no fader knobs. You can't just sort of dial it in. It's all
about timing and whatever Mother Nature has in store for us at that moment.
DELISA: When it came time to pick up the camera, Cole made an executive decision on set that helped
deliver the powerful work.
FRANCIS: After we had it all set up and going and lit perfect, ultimately Cole was like, "Let's
turn the lights off."
Cole is an artist who likes to see what we're
doing as we're doing it as opposed to being like, "Hey, let's just shoot a bunch, and
then I'll show you later." He really wants to be part of the process, so I feel like
the image that was ultimately selected was one where he felt he knew exactly what it
looked like. That made him confident to say that was the one.
DELISA After wrapping on set, how long did you have
to get the images back? BROWN: Days.
We prepped Friday, Saturday. We shot Sunday. I think the first
pass of images we got, what, Monday night? Tuesday morning? Something like that? It was
Monday. See, look at ... You see Justin? He's like Monday.
FRANCIS: Felton and I have our process. We understand timelines, deliverables, all the
corporate shit. You know, Cole ... It's his
prerogative to be like, "You know what? I'm just going to drop this now." He's like,
look, this image is hot, I'm going to do this, I want to do that, you know? It's, shall we
say, non-traditional, but he's earned the right to make those calls.
DELISA As he etched another tale in his musical story,
Cole also entered a new arena, debuting in the Basketball Africa League and accomplishing
a childhood dream of playing professional basketball.
This becomes yet another chapter in the life of Fayetteville’s Own - one that allows
us to see new heights for ourselves through witnessing Cole’s journey.
BROWN: What I love about the story is it meets this not even a crossroads. It
meets a point in the road where there's multiple ways to take it, and that's all a part of
the story that is Jermaine Cole.
DELISA: I’m Delisa with Genius News bringing you the meaning and the knowledge behind
the music.