Teeterin’ between enlightened and insanity
Now that I’m rich, I feel nobody understandin’ me
All I can do is cut the mic on, holler at you
Can’t let the fame scare me off from speaking candidly

p u n c h i n ’ . t h e . c l o c k kicks off with an incredibly insightful clip of Damian Lillard, after dropping 61 points, speaking about the necessity of doing the hard work when nobody’s watching, which helps illustrate the picture that J. Cole is trying to paint with his entire album here. It doesn’t matter how far he’s come, he still needs to put the work in every day if he wants to be the best. Check out the first 2 minutes of the video below that Cole put together documenting the creation of The Offseason and you can literally feel his passion as he explains the concept of the album to 21 Savage.

“Do you really wanna look back 10, 20 years from now on this music shit and be like the reason you didn’t make it in music was because you didn’t put in the work?…One more time before I leave, before I fill like I’m fulfilled in this game, let me try and reach new heights from a skill level standpoint.”

I’ve always had an affinity for J. Cole dating back to my college days when I was downloading The Warm Up and just playing it on loop in my dorm room. To watch one of your favorite artists come up from putting out mixtapes to minting his sixth straight Platinum album with The Offseason is incredibly satisfying. Hopefully he keeps putting out these elite level rhymes, but even if he retired today J. Cole has already cemented his status as one of the best to ever do it.