J. Cole's Reading List

"I read a book called The Artist’s Way and it’s for any blocked artist. A year into making the album, I had all this incredible material. It was flowing but it stopped. Going to the studio was too much pressure. One thing the book talked about was, ‘Three pages a day.’ The first thing you do is write three pages freehand nonstop. That’s how I got back to writing. I got notebooks and notebooks full of lyrics."

"I never saw the movie with Denzel Washington, but the book is incredible. It’s about a boxer who is a hometown hero in New Jersey because he went to juvie, then the army, made it big as a pro and then was wrongly accused of a triple murder. It’s kind of inspiring – and it makes me think, ‘Man, what have I really done?"