From The Come Up to The Fall-Off
I knew I wanted to write something after seeing The Fall-Off tour. I just didn’t want it to be an album review.
That wouldn’t really explain what this moment means to me.
I’ve listened to Cole for a long time. Long enough that when I hear certain songs, I don’t only hear the music. I remember where I was in my own life. I remember what I was dealing with. I remember who I was trying to become.
That relationship with the music eventually became part of my first book, The Come Up: A Story from the Ville.
And now here I am, years later, standing inside an arena watching The Fall-Off happen in real time.
That hit me differently.
When I wrote The Come Up, I included a letter to Cole. I called it “Dear Jermaine.” One line from that letter has been on my mind lately:
“I’m holding space for The Fall Off, not just as a fan, but as someone who’s learned that the end of one season is the beginning of another.”
At the time, I didn’t know when The Fall-Off would come.
I definitely didn’t know what my own life would look like when it did.
A lot has happened since I wrote those words.
I’ve grown as a husband. I’ve become a father twice over. I’ve had to rethink my career, my purpose, my faith, my mental health and what success actually means to me. I’ve had seasons where I felt like I knew exactly where I was going, and other seasons where I was trying to figure everything out one day at a time.
So when I finally heard The Fall-Off, I wasn’t listening as the same person who first waited for it.
Maybe that’s why this album feels different.
The music was never the whole story
Something I tried to make clear in The Come Up is that my connection to Cole has never been about pretending that I know him personally.
I don’t.
My connection has always been to the music, the story and the place we both call home.
Fayetteville.
Growing up there, seeing somebody from the Ville take an idea that started with a notebook and turn it into something the entire world could hear meant something to me.
It still does.
Cole showed me what was possible with his music.
Eventually, I had to figure out what was possible with my own pen.
That is where The Come Up came from.
Not my come up toward fame.
Not my come up toward money.
My come up toward myself.
Trying to understand the kid I was. The man I became. The things I survived. The things I still carry. The mistakes. The Army. Marriage. Fatherhood. Faith. Mental health. Fayetteville.
All of it.
Writing that book was one of the ways I learned how to put those pieces together.
And Cole’s music happened to be playing through a lot of those chapters.
Seeing the Market House onstage, I kept thinking about my second book, The Child Beneath the Market House. It was on my mind throughout the concert.
Then I saw The Fall-Off live
There was a moment at the concert when I looked around and really took everything in.
Thousands of people. The lights. The stage. Everybody reacting to music that started as an idea in somebody’s head.
And there I was in the middle of it. A kid from Fayetteville who grew up listening to another kid from Fayetteville.
Except I’m not that kid anymore.
That’s what got me.
I started thinking about all the versions of myself that had listened to Cole before that night.
The younger me. The soldier. The husband. The father. The man trying to heal. The writer who eventually sat down and wrote The Come Up.
I wish I could explain to some of those earlier versions of myself where we eventually ended up.
I don’t think they would believe me.
And I don’t mean that because my life became perfect. It didn’t.
I mean that I kept going.
Sometimes I forget to give myself credit for that.
Watching Cole with my cousin Jaheim became a core memory for me.
The Come Up. The Fall-Off.
On paper, they sound like opposites.
Life has taught me they’re closer than that.
Sometimes your come up requires something else to fall off.
An old way of thinking. An old version of yourself. Something you were chasing because you thought you were supposed to.
Sometimes growth isn’t climbing higher. Sometimes it’s finally understanding what you don’t need to carry anymore.
I’m still learning that.
That’s probably why that sentence from my original letter means even more to me today: The end of one season is the beginning of another.
I wrote it before I knew what the next seasons of my own life would bring. Now I’ve lived some of them.
A kid from Fayetteville watching another kid from Fayetteville. Except neither one of us are kids anymore.
Me and my baby boo
Dear Jermaine, again
So I guess this is another thank-you. Not because the first one expired. Because I meant it.
In my original letter, I wrote:
“Your music has been more than just a soundtrack to my life—it’s been a mirror, a guide, and at times, a lifeline.”
That is still true. I also wrote that your story gave me permission to tell mine.
I understand that sentence better now too.
It wasn’t permission in the sense that I needed somebody to tell me I could write. It was seeing somebody from where I’m from take his story seriously enough to believe other people might care about it.
That made me look at my own story differently.
So thank you, Jermaine. For the music. For continuing to carry Fayetteville with you. For giving people from places like ours proof that their ideas don’t have to stay trapped inside the city limits. And personally, thank you for giving me music that I could grow with.
I wrote The Come Up while I was still becoming. Truth is, I still am. Maybe we all are.
I don’t know what Cole’s next chapter looks like after The Fall-Off. I don’t completely know what mine looks like either.
But standing in that arena, thinking about the book I wrote, the letter I wrote before this album ever arrived, and everything that has happened in my life since then, one thought kept coming back to me:
Damn. I came a long way too.
From the Ville,
DaQuan D. Bethea
Author of The Come Up: A Story from the Ville