J. Cole Offers His NC Home to Single Mothers!

J.Cole was interviewed on popular podcast Combat Jack about his career and the upcoming projects he has working to improve his community.

The Can’t Get Enough rapper told the story of his childhood. He grew up in a single parent home and was a product of a divorced family. J.Cole gave vivid details of his humble beginnings as an army brat.

“In the South, especially in North Carolina, it’s like this,” he said of his family moving to a trailer park when he was 4. “I can’t speak for Atlanta, I’m not from there. But North Carolina is like this. That was my first glimpse of the hood. This is not Eminem, 8 Mile. Shit was fucked up. No disrespect to people that’s still in the trailers and shit but that’s what it is. It’s very affordable housing. Very affordable. The neighborhood we lived in was fucked up. I was a kid. The reason why it had such a big effect on me is that I was coming from somewhere else. I was coming from a military base. My father was in the army and my mother was too, she got out when she had me. Before I was 1 we moved back [from Germany] to Fayetteville, Fort Bragg.

My parents separated before I was even conscious. After we moved back they were separated. When they got divorced we had to move out of the military quarters ’cause you can only live there if you’re married. That’s like real nice housing, it ain’t no mansion but it’s safe. Everybody got jobs, everybody got benefits ’cause they’re all in the Army. When I’m four years old we have to move; it’s me, my brother, and my mother and we moved to Spring Lake, a little outskirt area of Fayetteville. We moved to the trailer park in Spring Lake. It was my first taste of like, ‘Oh, shit. This is nothing like where we came from.’ I knew the energy was not right. I knew my mother was the only white lady in the neighborhood and there was no man in the house.”

He then talked about how he is working on lending his old home to single mother’s with children to live rent free for two years to help get them on their feet.

“What we gon’ do, we still working it out right now, obviously it’s a detailed, fragile situation I don’t wanna play with. My goal is to have that be a haven for families. So every two years a new family will come in, they live rent-free. The idea is that it’s a single mother with multiple kids and she’s coming from a place where all her kids is sharing a room. She might have two, three kids, they’re sharing a room. She gets to come here rent free. I want her kids to feel how I felt when we got to the house.”

I thought this was such a generous and amazing idea. J.Cole has become so community aware over the past few years and it is appreciated. I really hope that his plans come to pass because just that one gesture can change someone’s life. I am amazed after I listening to the interview with him. He is truly awesome.

Listen to the Podcast Here: