Music

J. Cole Is Getting Torn Apart For His Confused Attempt To Come After Noname

Everyone from Chance The Rapper to Earl Sweatshirt is getting involved.

by Joseph Earp  18 June 2020
J. Cole and Noname Beef

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Earlier this week, J. Cole released his first single in almost a year, a muddled piece of work ostensibly about the Black Lives Matter movement called ‘Snow on Tha Bluff’.

I say ‘ostensibly’ because although the song drops numerous references to the protests taking place around the world, it’s mostly comprised of a long and confusing sledge of the young and extremely talented rapper Noname.

Indeed, in the hours since the song’s release, Cole has doubled down on the message behind the track, even as it’s led to him being shredded by such luminaries as Chance The Rapper and Earl Sweatshirt.

But the question remains: why did Cole come for the young rapper in the first place?

Why Is J. Cole Coming For Noname?

Right at the opening of the track, Cole calls out “a young lady out there” who is “way smarter” than him. That’s almost definitely Noname, who is well-known for her activism and fierce intelligence.

“I scrolled through her timeline in these wild times, and I started to read,” he raps. “She mad at these crackers, she mad at these capitalists, mad at these murder police. She mad at my niggas, she mad at our ignorance, she wear her heart on her sleeve.”

Then, the real kicker: “she mad at the celebrities, lowkey I be thinkin’ she talkin’ ’bout me.”

Now, it’s definitely true that Noname has been calling out the inaction of rappers around the world on her Twitter account. In a now deleted post, she put it simply: “Poor black folks all over the country are putting their bodies on the line in protest for our collective safety and y’all favorite top selling rappers not even willing to put a tweet up. Niggas whole discographies be about black plight and they no where to be found.”

But you’ll notice that nowhere in that Tweet did Noname explicitly call out J. Cole. In fact, as Genius, points out, Cole has been active in the movement, publicly marching in order to protest the death of George Floyd. It’s just as likely that Noname was calling out Drake, who has made barely any comment publicly, or even Kendrick Lamar, who has been similarly silent.

But Cole couldn’t help but make it all about himself.

Why Did Cole Double Down?

In the hours since the release of the song, the sledge made news around the world, and was much discussed on Twitter. Eventually, there was so much noise about the bars that Cole took to his Twitter to “clarify” — by which I mean he made everything more confusing.

At first, it seemed like Cole was trying to deny that the song was about Noname — he starts the thread by saying that some “assume” to know who the song is about, implying that they’re wrong.

But then, two Tweets later, he began complimenting Noname, saying “she has done and is doing the reading.”

It’s all as confused and muddled as the initial sledge, and feels like proof positive that Cole isn’t even sure what he’s on about himself.

Who Is Criticising Cole?

Obviously, Cole’s response has been a mess from the very beginning. So it was only a matter of time before he was going to get called out, and rightfully so.

The loudest voice to jump into the fray was Chance The Rapper. In a Tweet that contained no explicit reference to Cole but was later confirmed to be about him by Chance himself, he called out “men masking patriarchy and gaslighting as constructive criticism.”

Soon after, when a fan Tweeted Chance that Cole was “his people”, the rapper clarified even further.

“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.”

As for Earl Sweatshirt, he called out the controversy as being comprised of “multiple truths”. The first? That Cole’s track was “just corny.”

Will all this criticism lead to Cole issuing something like an apology? Unlikely, given the man’s statements so far. He seems more than happy to defend his confused sledge to the death. Why, given that the world currently requires his energies directed at other, far more important matters? Who knows.