Entertainment

J. Cole Puts His Childhood Home To Good Use

by Kenya Foy

Over the years, celebrities have performed some of the most compassionate, touching acts of kindness for their fans, but this next story is easily one of the most heartwarming. Before releasing his latest album 2014 Forest Hills Drive, rapper J. Cole held a listening party for fans in his North Carolina childhood home, for which the record is named. During his promo run, he even popped up at a fan's house where he played the album in its entirety before it hit the shelves. If that's not unbelievable enough for you, the "Apparently" rapper is preparing to take his fan interaction and generosity a huge step further — J. Cole plans to repurpose his childhood home into a living space for single mothers who have multiple children. But the sweetest part of the deal is that he intends for the families to live there rent-free.During an appearance on The Combat Jack Show, the 29-year-old rapper explained his idea in detail. "My goal is to have that be a haven for families," Cole said. "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."

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Treating fans kindly by posing for a selfie or granting them the highly coveted Twitter follow is one thing, but J. Cole's plans have the potential to impact families and communities on a pretty large scale. Fortunately, though, this type of community engagement isn't anything new for J.Cole who was among rappers on the ground in Ferguson and even released the song "Be Free," in which he addresses the death of Mike Brown.

It's always really refreshing to see rappers like J. Cole go beyond simply calling attention in their songs to socio-economic disparities, to actually making a conscious effort to resolve the issues.