J. Cole was raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina , where he moved as a baby and spent most of his childhood.

He was born on a U.S. Army base in Frankfurt, then–West Germany, in 1985, because his father was serving in the military there. When he was about eight months old, his mother moved with him and his older brother to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where they grew up in modest circumstances, often in trailer parks or small houses. Cole has described Fayetteville as a tough, high-crime city that strongly shaped his perspective and later his music.