In the roughly two decades since his first mixtape The Come Up, J. Cole has ascended to the highest heights of rap music. A rare and genuine album artist who blew up in a heavily singles-centric era, the Fayetteville, North Carolina-raised MC redefined hip-hop success on his own terms, amassing all manner of accolades and chart milestones along the way. Now, having reached the age of 41, with a massive and eager fanbase following his every bar, he takes the improbable step of releasing what is purportedly his final album, savvily titled The Fall-Off. Yet to preemptively dub this double-sided, feature-film-length outing a victory lap woefully underestimates the sheer endurance displayed on this widely anticipated drop. A student turned maestro of his chosen genre, Cole assuredly has seen his fair share of retirement narratives and the surrounding rollouts, but The Fall-Off doesn’t feel like the work of someone running out of things to say or otherwise sapped of creative energy. Following the liberal sampling of James Taylor’s laidback hit “Carolina in My Mind” that grounds “29 Intro,” Cole is downright animated for the booming “Two Six.” It serves as one of several nods here to the city that shaped him, a full-circle execution mirrored on “WHO TF IZ U” and “Bombs in the Ville/Hit the Gas,” cumulatively revisiting the 2014 Forest Hills Drive period of his career. Just as this visceral sense of place pervades the nostalgic first side of The Fall-Off—called Disc 29 in reference to a pivotal age in his life and career—so too does Cole’s remarkable penchant for storytelling. He wears his established Nas influence on his proverbial sleeve for “SAFETY,” a lyrical portrait of people he’s known presented with panache, and indulges his rock ’n’ roll side for the cautionary clubland parable “The Let Out.” The vulnerability displayed on moments like “Legacy” and the Alchemist-produced “Bunce Road Blues”—the latter featuring both Future and Tems—only intensifies things further. After all the backwards glancing of the dozen songs that comprise Disc 29, with “39 Intro” he moves the timeline purposefully forward a decade. Here we begin to see where Cole sees himself in the present day, evidenced in the thought exercises of “The Fall-Off Is Inevitable” and the Petey Pablo homage “Old Dog.” At this stage, he’s able to probe his past with a more mature mentality, going deep into the metaphors for the Common-referencing “I Love Her Again.” Naturally, he brings it all back home at the end with “and the whole world is the Ville,” returning thematically to his Fayetteville roots and subsequent, storied Queens, New York, moves.