The Warm Up (2009)

J. Cole · 2009 · 74 min

J. Cole's The Warm Up places his songwriting ambitions beside the familiar mixtape practice of borrowing beats. “Lights Please,” “I Get Up” and “Dollar and a Dream II” sit within a sequence that also includes “Dead Presidents II” and “Last Call.” The result is a useful view of the work preceding Friday Night Lights and his first studio album.

The release record identifies it as a 2009 download. The indexed edition has twenty-two entries, with “Water Break Interlude” in the middle and “Losing My Balance” marked as a bonus at the end. That bonus status should remain visible when comparing the original giveaway with later services or repackaged collections.

Selected edition: Original 22-track indexed mixtape; selected MP3 mirror from the documented source. 22 audio files, 111,613,075 bytes and 73:54 of measured audio.

Verification: pinned local ZIP SHA-256; member CRC and size; full audio decode; every torrent piece (no publisher checksum). The seedbox copy matched every file’s SHA-256 and every torrent piece; all files passed public HTTPS range, length and byte checks. The house client verified the complete payload and is seeding it.

The pinned 22-file MixtapeMonkey ZIP preserves the documented original indexed program. Ordered member identities match the release-page audio index at https://mixtapemonkey.com/182/j-cole-the-warm-up. Every audio file passed full decoding and every torrent piece was independently checked. The measured MP3 encoding is 192 kb/s. These are source, program and byte checks; no comparative listening claim is made.

Reference edition: the 22-entry source sequence. This release sequence was used to review the selected files.

Source limits: No comparative listening assessment is claimed; Source ID3 track-number tags disagree at positions 6, 12, 17, 19; the published release-page filenames and index establish the selected order; The selected MP3 mirror encoding measures 192 kb/s; ZIP SHA-256 is a local observed fingerprint; the host supplies no independent publisher checksum.

These are source and file checks; no comparative listening assessment is claimed.

Source declaration: Artist/DJ-issued free promo; copyright retained. Source evidence.

Hosting this entry was approved by the owner on October 6, 2026. The source declaration remains unchanged.