J. COLE at 99 Sudbury, Wednesday, June 26. Rating: NNN
For J. Cole’s Dollar & A Dream tour, he visited 10 North American cities, played teeny venues, announced locations day-of, and charged $1 for entry. It reeks of publicity parade surrounding his new album, Born Sinner, but it’s also pretty cool if you’re a Cole fan and managed to get in line early.
His last (and only Canadian) stop was Toronto, and getting in was a clusterfuck of police and frustrated fans. Some 5,000 showed up, some 500 got in. Maybe that was a good thing though, as the temperature inside must have been hovering around 50C. (Every time I thought I couldn’t possibly have another stream of perspiration trickling down my body, I’d spring a near-projectile leak from behind my ear or the base of my neck.)
Cole was frustrated they wouldn’t let him fill the half-packed venue, but dedicated to giving “all fuckin’ 15 of us” an experience.
Seeing an artist whose album sold almost as many copies in its first week as Yeezus with only a few hundred other people is pretty damn cool. People weren’t particularly shoved toward the stage, so getting close was easy. Because he’s properly stadium-touring the album in a couple months, Cole was able to perform lesser-known jams from his mixtapes like Simba, Before I’m Gone and Girl Of My Dreams. Don’t expect to hear songs from the radio, he told us. He also said he wasn’t going to do anything from Born Sinner. Thankfully, he fibbed, and performed two of the album’s best – Forbidden Fruit and Crooked Smile toward the end.
Much of the show was by-request from the audience, and if Cole hadn’t performed it in years, or didn’t remember all the lyrics, he improvised, or called someone on stage to rap in the blanks.
He sat for a good portion of the songs, which was kind of odd. Perhaps the swelter got to him, or maybe he was still sick from the food poisoning that thwarted our interview earlier in the day. His spirits and energy were high, though, and an hour and a quarter after starting (right on time, at 8:30!), he stepped into the crowd and glad-handed for at least 10 minutes. Maybe longer, I couldn’t tell. Had to get out of that sweatbox.
