J. Cole announces ‘2014 Forest Hills Drive’ anniversary show at Madison Square Garden

J. Cole has announced a show at Madison Square Garden to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his album ‘2014 Forest Hills Drive’.

The rapper’s third album was released in December 2014 and included the singles ‘Apparently’, ‘Wet Dreamz’ and ‘No Role Modelz’. It went on to be Grammy nominated, and picked up BET Hip Hop and Billboard Music awards.

Now, an anniversary show has been confirmed, which will take place at the New York City venue on December 16, nearly a decade to the day since the original release. Pre-sale begins at 10am EST on December 2, with general sale taking place at 10am EST on December 4. Find your tickets here.

Cole is also planning to set aside exactly 2014 tickets, which will be made available for $1, with the on-sale details for those to be revealed on the day of the show.

The rapper has also been in the process of uploading his early mixtapes onto streaming platforms in recent weeks, with ‘The Come Up’ and ‘The Warm Up’ being joined this week (November 28) by 2010’s ‘Friday Night Lights’, a major breakthrough release for the artist.

This week also saw Cole previewing two unreleased songs that he worked on with Kendrick Lamar in the same era as ‘Friday Night Lights’. Appearing on his recently-launched Inevitable podcast, on which he chronicles the evolution of his career, he gave a taste of the two songs, ‘Temptations’ and ‘Shock The World’.

Cole recalled how he and Lamar met at a cover shoot for that year’s XXL Freshman list that their mutual friend Jay Rock appeared on.

He recounted: “I played him ‘Temptation’ with my verse on it, I played him a couple of other joints that had one verse on it. When I played them for him, I was like, ‘Bro, you can have these if you want.’”

“I remember he said – and it always stuck with me ’cause I had never heard nobody say this to me before – he was like, ‘N***a, are you sure you want to give me these?!’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, go ahead, take them.’ He was like, ‘Bro, you sleeping on yourself.’ It struck me because it was actually the stone cold truth of my reality at that time. I was so focused on getting this unicorn hit for my album that I was actually sleeping on the shit that I did well.”