I sorta tried to figure out why J. Cole — who’s super capable and seems pretty excellent for the most part — is such a boring person on record. I think it’s because he works too hard.

One of Cole’s major storylines is that he grew up poor and never made money until he made it in rap. Cole was working crap jobs in college, just like everyone else in college. Being young and poor in New York is a tale as old as the city itself. And even if he didn’t have much money, he had something more valuable — a tremendous work ethic. He could have potentially played D1 basketball, but chose instead to focus on his music. In the process, he just happened to graduate magna cum laude.

J. Cole’s whole career seems to have been carried out with equal parts industriousness and serendipity. (He just happened to room with a guy who himself went on to be a rap music writer, the author of the Complex profile.) Even when he tells a seemingly obligatory tale of being arrested on his album, it’s 1) for the innocuous crime of driving with an invalid license, 2) on the day he learns he’ll be meeting with Jay-Z. Even Cole’s arrest was charmed.