Cole World: The Sideline Story Review

The talent was never in question and the packaging is what fails him. He produced most of it himself and the results are muddy and thin, drums that do not hit and soul loops flattened into wallpaper, and the sequencing keeps pausing the good material to make room for something aimed at a chart that was never going to want it. Work Out is the clearest example, a Paula Abdul sample and a hook that sounds focus grouped, arriving two tracks into an album that had been sold on earnestness.

Lost Ones is the real thing, a genuinely difficult song about an unwanted pregnancy told from both sides, and Lights Please carries over the best of the mixtape era. Nobody's Perfect has charm. It went gold in a week on anticipation alone and left everybody slightly disappointed, which set the tone for the argument about him that has never stopped.