February 11, 2015 Music » Yes, Yes Y'all

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J. Cole inspires with latest venture 

Hip-hop artist transforms childhood home for single mothers

By
click to enlarge J. Cole

  • J. Cole

All the single ladies ... who have kids, North Carolina rapper J. Cole wants you to live in his childhood home. Last month, he announced his intention to turn the split-level home at 2014 Forest Hills Drive in Fayetteville into a unique shelter-of-sorts. Single mothers and their children can live there rent-free for two years. After those two years, another family will move in and get the same deal. There's no word on what happens when your two years is up if you don't have somewhere else to go, but I suppose he'll let the lawyers figure that one out.

Cole's mother was single and struggled when they moved into the home which he loved enough to use as the namesake of his latest (and greatest) album. In his song, "Apparently," he raps about how it was foreclosed on without him knowing:

Think back to Forest Hills, no perfect home

But the only thing like home I've ever known

Until they snatched it from my mama

And foreclosed her on the loan

I'm so sorry that I left you there to deal with that alone

Cole bought the house last summer. When 2014 Forest Hills Drive dropped back in December, he invited fans to the home for a listening party. Shortly thereafter, it became his third album to reach No. 1 on the Billboard charts. The cover features a photo of him sitting on the roof. Fans have been stopping by constantly to recreate the photo. They've also been stealing the street sign. If you're a serious enough J Cole fan to do such things, it's only about a three-hour drive from Charlotte.

I like his music OK, but I'm a huge fan of him as a person. He started the Dreamville Foundation, an organization that helps underprivileged youth in Fayetteville, providing them with school supplies and taking them on trips to Carowinds.

He's one of the few rap artists who bothered to make a song about Ferguson, and he actually went there to pay his respects to the Brown family. Now he's bought back his momma's house and wants to help single mothers in her honor.

He had the house redone to look exactly the way it did when he lived there as a kid. Adorning the walls of his old bedroom is a huge poster collage featuring Black Star, Tupac, Wu-Tang, Eminem ­— all of the artists he used to look up to, figuratively and literally speaking.

He told Complex Magazine in an interview he's proud to be someone children in Fayetteville can look up to.

"Fayetteville has some heroes now ... We never even had that [when I was growing up]. You couldn't go to Raleigh, Charlotte or Atlanta and be proud of where you were from. The pride before was about coming from somewhere that had a reputation of being a hard place to make it. Now there's a pride about accomplishment, whether it's me, or Eric Maynor, who made it to the NBA, or Eric Curry, who was the No. 3 draft pick in the NFL Draft. It sucks that these things have to come from sports and entertainment, but it's something for kids to look up to and say, 'Somebody from here did something.' I don't want to inspire kids to rap. I want to let them know that anything they want to do is possible. I come from here and did some shit that was impossible, so if you want to be an astronaut, lawyer, doctor, writer, journalist or whatever, I want to inspire you to do that."

This is what hip-hop is about — remembering where you came from, honoring it with your music, helping your community and inspiring future generations. I only hope more of his contemporaries get the memo.

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