
He equivocates-“crime pays like a part-time job” is the sort of evocative, economical phrase that has eluded Cole so often in the past. And when he rattles off rhetorical questions (“Have you ever seen a nigga that was Black on the moon?/Have you ever seen your brother go to prison as you cry?/Have you ever seen a motherfucking ribbon in the sky?”) he’s working in a long tradition of rappers and writers knocking a grave present against against its opposite. To that end, at the song’s most defiant moment, Cole nods to his real life: “If they want a nigga, they gon’ have to send a SWAT team.”Īt its lowest points, 4 Your Eyez Only rehashes Cole’s worst tendencies. (It’s worth noting that while “Deja Vu” and Bryson Tiller’s massive “ Exchange” share a sample and, at points, have similar drum programming, producer Vinylz claims that he and Boi-1da produced “Deja Vu” before its beat was stolen and repurposed for the Tiller version.) “No Role Modelz,” a breakout hit from 2014 Forest Hills Drive, tried to cast crass, regressive ideas about women as a moral struggle “Deja Vu” is its mopey inverse, where Cole shouts over the music in a club to ask “Who in their right mind letting you out the house alone?/Tell me, is your house a home?” The song also lapses into some of the album’s laziest writing, like “On a scale from 1 to 10, that girl’s a hundred.” It’s like “ Marvin’s Room” for guys who brought their high school letter jackets to college.

Speaking of production, that’s the one area where Eyez falls far behind Forest Hills Drive.


After “Deja Vu,” the album slips into a three-song lull of pale, ornate music-unfortunate because the songs grapple with the early death of parents, Cole’s love for his wife, and McMillan’s death, respectively.
