Buy Now
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Jun 17, 2013"Crooked Smile" with special guests TLC is a genuine, mature step in the right direction and will have no trouble reaching vintage age. A handful of other numbers carry that same weight, making Born Sinner a daring step forward for Cole and an exciting attempt at mastering Jay's Blueprint style.
-
Jun 21, 2013At its best, Born Sinner, showcases J. Cole's overall musicality, pairing his ability as a lyricist with a more broadly developed production palette.
-
Jul 15, 2013He’s certainly impressed with his flow, delivery and production, and while he hasn’t released the next golden hip hop album he’s coming close.
-
Jun 18, 2013His riffs on racism, homophobia and misogyny have more lyrical cunning than insight. But when it comes to twisting himself into Kanye-size pretzels of career-oriented real talk, he's a champ.
-
Jun 17, 2013Born Sinner is an honest account of Cole's growth and development, revealing his humble beginnings, challenging successes and bright future.
-
Jun 20, 2013Cole should be fired up to make his own Illmatic, his own Reasonable Doubt, or his own College Dropout. But here he seems stuck somewhere between starstruck and envious, fawning over his idols instead of trying to take their crowns.
-
Jun 21, 2013Allusions to apples are all across the 16 self-produced tracks, along with glimpses of snakes, countless temptations, and the feeling that Cole knows too much for his own good.
-
Jun 13, 2013He's a talented, nimble rapper, but diatribes like "Trouble" and "Land of the Snakes" are more exhausting than impressive; too often he comes off like a strident high school jock with a word-a-day calendar.
-
Jun 14, 2013Born Sinner doesn't match the cohesive satisfactions of Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, though it boasts better writing.
-
Jul 9, 2013There are some solid points buried deep down in the wreckage of Cole’s seven-bar pileup, but you’ll have to sift through a great, big, ambivalent pile of solecisms in order to get to them. As it turns out, that holds true for the vast majority of Born Sinner.
-
Jun 13, 2013Like his debut disc, Cole World, Born Sinner displays an astute understanding of the male-female dynamic--or at least his contributions to the demise of his relationships.
-
Jun 18, 2013The flawed set is buoyed by its clear vision and diverse musicality.
-
Jun 21, 2013If Born Sinner proves anything, it’s that he’s not ready to take the fall, but he as a long way to go if he wants to rope off an area all his own in hip hop’s evolution.
-
Jun 18, 2013Cole's not an especially charismatic MC, but he has a welcome self-awareness and good taste in backdrops.
-
Jun 18, 2013The project succeeds in tying its theme of spiritual crisis amidst stardom to an analogy for the struggle to satisfy purists, but the overall results for this concept are fairly lackluster.
-
Jun 13, 2013Born Sinner is a real grower, one that in many ways completely exceeds expectations and demands your attention.
-
Jul 2, 2013Three years after his album should have put the "sideline" comments to rest, Cole’s still studying the traditional playbook from the bench, preferring to follow Nas’ bible than strike out on his own.
-
Jun 19, 2013While BS may not exhibit the growth sonically or conceptually that fans may have anticipated after hearing Cole’s early work, he remains too gifted lyrically, too keen of a storyteller, and too emotionally open for his sophomore LP to be anything less than impressive, but not overly so.
-
Jun 25, 2013Like Illmatic it eschews pop emoluments, and conceptually it's just as canny.
-
Jun 19, 2013Overall, Born Sinner is an impressive effort.
-
Jun 24, 2013With the exception of “Crooked Smile” and “Let Nas Down,” the last five songs hold over the album, but don’t add value to the overall project.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 308 out of 410
-
Mixed: 44 out of 410
-
Negative: 58 out of 410
-
Jun 17, 2013
-
Jun 18, 2013
-
Jun 18, 2013