J. Cole – KOD

Like its 2016 predecessor, 4 Your Eyez Only, the music on KOD is sparse and understated: even its most uptempo track, "ATM", is set to muted, jazzy piano chords, while listeners of a certain vintage might find the term “trip-hop” springing to mind unbidden when the meandering guitar and vibraphone sample of "Brackets" slouch into life.

KOD’s sound exists in a curious, appealing area somewhere between beatifically stoned and slightly unsettling. "Motiv8" revolves around little more than an eerie keyboard figure and a disembodied cry of “get money” from Lil Kim’s guest appearance on the 1995 Junior MAFIA hit of the same title – ripped out of context, it sounds bleak and despairing – and there’s something really haunting about "Photograph", with its delicate two-note guitar sample and a chorus whose vocal appears to be slightly out of step with the beat.

This is an album on which Cole sets himself up as the conscience of mainstream hip hop – the goofy, self-deprecating humour of his 2014 single "Wet Dreamz" and the warm contentment of "Foldin’ Clothes" are both conspicuous by their absence. Instead, we find Cole repeatedly raising a concerned eyebrow at drug use in the world of Xanax-fuelled rap and probing hip-hop’s obsession with money.

It’s the kind of thing that could come off a little preachy but it doesn’t here, largely because Cole is always quick to implicate himself.

Tracklist:
A1 Intro
A2 KOD
A3 Photograph
A4 The Cut Off
A5 ATM
A6 Motiv8
A7 Kevin's Heart
B1 Brackets
B2 Once An Addict (Interlude)
B3 Friends
B4 Window Pain (Outro)
B5 1985 (Intro To "The Fall Off")