On December 9, six years ago, J. Cole released what many fans and critics consider his greatest studio LP. 2014 Forest Hills Drive was praised as a masterful body of work and famously went triple-Platinum with no features.
In celebration of FHD’s anniversary, Cole’s Dreamville Records published a music video for the “Fire Squad” track off the album. Maxim Bohichik directed the cinematic visuals which feature Cole with clearly shorter locks than what he is known to have in recent years.
A bunch of @JColeNC videos got deleted way back and today were getting them all back up. And because it’s the anniversary #FHD heres the world premiere of the never before released video for ‘Fire Squad’ 🔥🔥🔥 Happy Holidays! https://t.co/103ttJ79Hh pic.twitter.com/MDJgOwjZH2
— Dreamville (@Dreamville) December 9, 2020
“A bunch of @JColeNC videos got deleted way back and today [we’re] getting them all back up. And because it’s the anniversary #FHD [here’s] the world premiere of the never before released video for ‘Fire Squad’ [three fire emojis] Happy Holidays!” read a tweet from the verified Dreamville Twitter account.
2014 Forest Hills Drive debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart with 353,000 copies sold. That was the best first-week sales of the North Carolina-bred emcee’s career up until that point. 2016’s 4 Your Eyez Only went on to move 492,000 first-week units.
FHD was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards, losing to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. J. Cole’s third studio LP did win Album of the Year at the 2015 BET Hip Hop Awards by beating projects from Lamar, Drake, Nicki Minaj, Wale, and Big Sean.
