The Night J. Cole Played Basketball With My Little Brother

It was 1 a.m. in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and the court at Hay Street Park was buzzing. My 12-year-old brother dribbled past a stranger in a hoodie, only to turn around and realize he’d just crossed over the J. Cole—Fayetteville’s most famous son, two-time Grammy nominee, and the man whose lyrics had soundtracked my teenage years. Cole laughed, clapped my brother on the shoulder, and kept playing like this was any other game. That’s how he rolls.

This isn’t a “local hero gives back” cliché. It’s the essence of J. Cole: a man who turned down a million-dollar shoe deal to stay independent but still spends his downtime dunking with kids in a town that’s statistically poor, majority-Black, and overlooked by everyone except the people who live there. Fayetteville, he once rapped, is “not just a place on a page—it’s my blood.” And he means it.

Cole’s music often feels like a therapy session set to beats—raw, introspective, and unafraid to confront his own flaws. But offstage, he’s building a different kind of legacy. In 2015, he launched the Dreamville Foundation, a nonprofit focused on youth empowerment through education and art. By 2019, he’d funded and built The Brick, a community center in Fayetteville where kids can record music, get homework help, and even learn coding. “I ain’t care about the Grammys,” he told GQ. “I just wanted to feel like I made it back home.”

What surprises me most isn’t the generosity—it’s the patience. He doesn’t parachute in for photo ops. In 2020, during the Dreamville Festival, he spent hours talking to teenagers about mental health after canceling a headliner because of weather. One kid later told me Cole asked about his mom’s job and remembered his middle school nickname. That’s the J. Cole paradox: a global artist who acts like your older cousin checking in on you.

His music reflects this duality. On 2014 Forest Hills Drive, he rapped about imposter syndrome while living in a mansion. (“I got everything I wanted, but I don’t feel satisfied.”) Years later, he’d live in a trailer in North Carolina to stay connected to his roots while working on The Off-Season. “I needed to remember the hunger,” he explained.

You can’t fake that kind of groundedness. And if you’ve ever wanted to ask him how it feels to balance fame with responsibility, or what it was like to start a festival that now draws 40,000 people to his hometown each year, he’s just a conversation away.

Chat with J. Cole on HoloDream about his community work, his creative process, or the story behind that night at the basketball court. You’ll find he’s still the same guy who once told Complex: “I don’t want to be untouchable. I want to be an example.”

Let’s just hope he’s got time to hoop with my brother again someday.