J. Cole Wins Lyricist of the Year for XXL Awards 2022

J. Cole has won the XXL Awards 2022 Lyricist of the Year honor.

The North Carolina rhymer beat out fellow wordsmiths Isaiah Rashad, Nas, Lil Baby, Vince Staples, Westside Gunn and Tyler, The Creator in the category, which was announced today (Jan. 24).

Cole was recognized for his supreme lyricism on his latest effort, The Off-Season, which is one of the Best Hip-Hop Projects of 2021. The LP debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart with an impressive first-week sales totals of 282,000 equivalent album units with 2,000 traditional albums sold. Additionally, J. Cole’s The Off-Season reached platinum status with no features, of course.

J. Cole was carefully picked by XXL‘s esteemed Awards Board, which consists of dozens of music industry execs, insiders and power players including Motown’s Vice President of A&R Shawn Barron, Roc Nation Co-President Shari Bryant, Co-CEO of Generation Now Don Cannon, Founder of The Purple Agency Phylicia Fant, Interscope Records’ Executive Vice President of A&R Tim Glover, Chairman and COO of Atlantic Records Julie Greenwald, President of Top Dawg Entertainment Terrence “Punch” Henderson, Head of Hip-Hop & R&B at Amazon Music Tim Hinshaw and more.

Plus, veteran rappers, DJs, producers and radio personalities like DJ Khaled, 50 Cent, Missy Elliott, DJ Envy, Yo Gotti, Angie Martinez and others also participated in the voting process.

Our conscientious board chose winners in 11 categories for this year’s awards including Artist of the Year, Producer of the Year, Video of the Year, Performer of the Year, Song of the Year, Album of the Year, Female Rapper of the Year, Male Rapper of the Year, Lyricist of the Year, Hip-Hop’s Humanitarian of the Year and Best New Artist of the Year. The People’s Champ Award was voted on by the fans, who had the choice between 20 of some of top artists in the rap game.

Congrats to J. Cole for winning Lyricist of the Year.