To Share Your Doubts, or to Not Speak at All

6.17.20

J. Cole

Many were probably pumped at the announcement that J. Cole had dropped a new track last night. However, the song received instant criticism, leaving J. Cole fans to ask themselves if he is really worthy of being their King. When it comes to the racial injustices of society, and what we can do better to help those struggling, would you want your heroes to tell you they are not educated enough to say anything, or rather, to say nothing at all? Snow On Tha Bluff describes what is going on in the world, and J. Cole’s interesting take on the matter.

In the song, J. Cole talks about a “queen” who he feels has been speaking out the Black Lives Matters movements in a way that does more bad than good. This is because he feels he is not well educated in the space. He wants the knowledge, but feels like she thinks she is better than him, and all those whom need the advice, by the way she speaks out. At 8AM this morning, J. Cole went on a Twitter rant explaining his motives of the song. In this rant, he stated he stands by everything he said, and tagged Noname in a tweet, letting the world know, this verse was about her. Noname is a female hip-hop artist from Chicago. If you do not believe you have heard of her, she was on Chance the Rapper’s mixtape, Acid Rap on 2013, on the track Lost.

J. Cole’s tweets did seem like they were attempting, at least, to ease any negative sentiment towards Noname. He asked his followers to follow Noname. He says he loves her, and likes that she challenges his thinking. Which really, means he does not agree with her thinking. With that, he closes his rant suggesting that we may not all agree with each other, but we should be gentle with each other. Ironically, this was after he put out a whole diss track about her beliefs, some would say. One of those people, would be, of course, Chance the Rapper.

Chance has been emotional during these times, and has actually spent most of his recent times preaching about protecting our black women. With this, he did not take well J. Cole criticizing Noname’s demeanor, and declared he has taken an L on this new track. When questioned about the negativity regarding someone praised as high as J. Cole, Chance responds:

They both my peoples but only one of them put out a whole song talking about how the other needs to reconsider their tone and attitude in order to save the world. It’s not constructive and undermines all the work Noname has done. It’s not BWs job to spoon feed us. We grown

Quite frankly, I have to agree. Even if J. Cole wanted to inform his fans, that the reason he was not speaking out was because he did not know what to say, why criticize a woman, for using her own platform, in her own way? The choice of words and delivery just seems a bit harsh after asking to be gentle, especially for one whose words are always chosen with thought and precision.

On top of Chance’s passionately given L, others shared their dislikes of the song. Earl Sweatshirt from Odd Future said the song was corny. Though his Twitter page was allegedly hacked the night prior, these recent tweets still exist and seem to have come from the artist, himself. Two tweets shared by Earl Sweatshirt compare this song to a white man rapping about George Floyd, admitting he knows nothing about the severity of what events have just taken place.

Before I get grouped in to anything let me state that first truth of many is that the s**t was just corny.. it would be like on one of the nights following Big Floyd’s death if a white rapper (one that ppl like) made a "I’m uneducated on ur plight" track it just taste bad lol

What if yall are mad at yourselves that you look to cole for more than he has to give? Bro just laid his cards down on the table "I went to college, I don’t know stuff" and he’s a lot of *** elected representative

With the second tweet, I could not agree with this more. So many people look up to J. Cole. They put him in the top five rappers of all time category on a consistent basis. Some could look at this is and say, if you do not even care to study the culture and learn how to help the people who are buying your music, why should people look up to you? On the other hand, we could look at this and simply say, J. Cole is human, not a Superman, in which some people may feel he is to them. No one is, and we need to realize that these artists are normal humans just like us, as J. Cole does also mention in this song.

To this point, Royce Da 5’9 just completed an interview, where he speaks on the criticism J. Cole has been receiving, in addition to Kendrick Lamar. These two are of the elite in hip-hop, and K. Dot’s manager recently said he will not be making a quick comeback, because he is not appreciated enough. Royce chimed in to say that, there are some people that look up to these guys for advice and opinions, so they are challenging them to provide some light. On the other hand, you have people who are just haters, that are going to challenge them in a place where they feel vulnerable to take away their shine. Royce always seems to have words of wisdom, as he shares that these guys should be proud so many look to up them, but that we should not expect the world.

J. Cole did not mean harm by his song. He wanted to share his truth. I am the biggest J. Cole fan in the world, and I did not love this song, but it brings up lots of conversations that need to be had. I agree with Chance and Earl that this song is not a good look. But there are also other ways to look at it. They also bring up two very different things. Chance is unhappy with his choice of words against females, while Earl is suggesting he needs to learn what is going on. What I would love to see, is where J. Cole will make a change in his lack of knowledge in this area, rather than seemingly criticizing people whose voices intimidate them.

Verdict: We want our heroes to speak up. But not like this. Not saying anything would have kept J. Cole somewhat under wraps. Now, we want him to make a change, though the cancellation party does not make a stop here.