About half the album bears Cole's production signature: a glimmering update on 1990s jazz-rap, spiked with live-sounding boom-bap drums. As a rap aesthetic, it's about as rigidly conservative as they come. But Cole is admirably committed to it, and he fleshes it out with surprising musical detail-- backup vocals, comping jazz guitars, lots and lots of grand piano. The songs that stick to this template feel warm, pleasant, and Cole-ish. The rest of Cole World is a 2011-era pop-rap project with a varying success rate: the madcap, syncopated single "Can't Get Enough" feels like a lost transmission from 2002-era rap radio, and it succeeds only insofar as it compels you to imagine how much better an '03-era T.I., or even N.O.R.E., would have finessed the beat than does Cole, who deflates the track's bounce.