J. Cole surprised fans today with the release of his new single, “Snow On Tha Bluff.” The track is a direct response to ongoing protests against police brutality and racial injustice, and specifically speaks to Cole’s struggles with navigating activism as a celebrity. “There’s a young lady out there she way smarter than me/I scrolled through her timeline in these wild times and I started to read/She mad at these crackers, she mad at these capitalists, mad at these murder police,” he raps in part, presumably alluding to Chicago rapper Noname’s social media presence.
Most of the single is similarly preoccupied with Noname and Cole’s feelings of inadequacy and confusion in the face of her vocal activism: “And the frustration that fills her words seems to come from the fact that most people don’t see/Just ‘cause you woke and I’m not, that shit ain’t no reason to talk like you better than me.” Noname herself responded to the song on Twitter, referencing the lyric “But, shit, it’s something about the queen tone that’s bothering me.” She later deleted the tweet. “Snow On Tha Bluff” marks Cole’s first official single since 2019’s “Middle Child.”
Most of the single is similarly preoccupied with Noname and Cole’s feelings of inadequacy and confusion in the face of her vocal activism: “And the frustration that fills her words seems to come from the fact that most people don’t see/Just ‘cause you woke and I’m not, that shit ain’t no reason to talk like you better than me.” Noname herself responded to the song on Twitter, referencing the lyric “But, shit, it’s something about the queen tone that’s bothering me.” She later deleted the tweet. “Snow On Tha Bluff” marks Cole’s first official single since 2019’s “Middle Child.”
