This is the story that needs to be told.
Featuring songs off his album 4 Your Eyez Only, rapper J. Cole's latest HBO documentary provides the supplementary visual to the message he hopes to tell -- stories of the uphill struggles in small town Black communities fighting for representation of their problems.
Bringing us into the communities directly, including Ferguson of the infamous Michael Brown shooting to his very own hometown Fayetteville, we hear and see realness behind each story told in the very voices of the people who have experienced a life of dealing with racial misrepresentations and painful losses from crime within their own community. The young children in these communities express feelings of oppression, while the parents can only offer outcries of despair and hope in the wake of suffering. All this in which J. Cole is trying to formulate as a message for his own newborn daughter through his album 4 Your Eyez Only.
The greatest moment in the film comes from the chance encounter of a 52 year old woman, making her way to her next job of three, where she tells us her story of glowing positivity and liberation to keep life moving. Overcoming the burden of experiencing two of her children pass away due to gun violence and murder, her testimony is of one holding onto sheer hope and trust in God that He is there watching her, protecting her from anything that gets thrown in her way.
I look at it like God has me here for a reason. Because so many of us are hurting and we're confused and angry. We're all doing anything and we don't know which way to turn, but God is the answer.
Watch the full J.Cole 4 Your Eyez Only Documentary here below
God is real and he usin' me for a bigger purpose
So f*ck the world that would have you think that a ni**a worthless
Sometimes I think that these verses can help a person
Way more than the ones they readin' in churches on days of worship
No disrespect to the Lord and Savior, that ain't just ego
I just observe that them words no longer relate to people
'Cause modern times be flooded with dollar signs
And social media stuntin', my ni**as just wanna shine
Their frame of mind so far removed from the days and times of Nazareth
Like these days is a labyrinth, in a maze so elaborate
We barely get through half of it 'fore it's too late
[J. Cole - Want to Fly]
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