J. Cole Europe Tour 2026 — All European Dates, Cities & Tickets

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About J. Cole

Jermaine Lamarr Cole was born January 28, 1985 at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina, the son of an African American Army serviceman and a white postal-worker mother. His father left when Cole was a baby, and his mother raised him on Forest Hills Drive in Fayetteville — the suburban address that would later title his breakthrough album. He started rapping at twelve, recorded throughout high school at Terry Sanford, and moved to New York for college at St. John's University on scholarship, graduating magna cum laude in 2007. The Come Up mixtape in 2007 reached Jay-Z through Mark Pitts at Sony, leading to the famous story of Cole waiting outside the Roc Nation office in Tribeca with a beat CD — and Cole becoming the first artist signed to Roc Nation in 2009. The Warm Up in 2009 and Friday Night Lights in 2010 established him as the central figure in the early-2010s mixtape-to-album transition, and Cole World: The Sideline Story debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in September 2011. Born Sinner in June 2013 released the same day as Kanye West's Yeezus, took the Billboard 200 number-one spot in its third week, and produced Power Trip, Crooked Smile, and Forbidden Fruit. 2014 Forest Hills Drive in December 2014 produced the platinum-without-features mythology — released without a single guest feature, debuted at number one, certified diamond by the RIAA, producing No Role Modelz, Wet Dreamz, Apparently, A Tale of 2 Citiez, and G.O.M.D. — and is widely cited as a generation-defining hip-hop album. 4 Your Eyez Only in December 2016 and the accompanying HBO documentary continued the no-features approach at number one. KOD in April 2018 debuted at number one with three songs in the Hot 100 top ten simultaneously. The Off-Season in May 2021 debuted at number one and produced m y . l i f e with 21 Savage. Might Delete Later in April 2024 included 7 Minute Drill, the response to Kendrick Lamar's Like That verse. Cole withdrew 7 Minute Drill from streaming within days at the Dreamville Festival main stage after publicly apologizing — one of the most discussed turning points of the 2024 hip-hop discourse cycle. The Inevitable era now anchors the active album cycle, with The Fall Off as the larger framework Cole has discussed since 2018 as the closing chapter of his recording career. Dreamville Records, co-founded with Ibrahim Hamad in 2007 through an Interscope partnership, anchors JID, EarthGang, Bas, Cozz, Lute, Ari Lennox, and Omen. The Dreamville Festival, held annually since 2018 at Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh, has become the flagship hip-hop festival in the Carolinas. Cole married Melissa Heholt in 2015 and the couple has two children. The Dreamville Foundation runs back-to-school programs in Fayetteville. Cole also played semi-professional basketball in the Basketball Africa League's Rwanda Patriots cycle in 2021.

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