On Friday April 5th, J. Cole dropped his 4th mixtape Might Delete Later. It was a surprise drop, mostly in response to a song off of Metro Boomin latest collab album with Future, We Don’t Trust You. Specifically, the 6th song off the Metro album, Like That featuring Kendrick Lamar which dissed First Person Shooter, a song off of Drake’s latest album in collaboration with J. Cole For All the Dogs.
While J. Cole is known for some really amazing songs and albums such as No Role Modelz off of 2014 Forest Hills Drive, I found myself not really enjoying this album. While I generally like rap, I find myself listening to the more drill and trap side of things with artists like Travis Scott, 21 Savage, and Future constantly in my rotation.
It’s not like I have a personal vendetta against J. Cole. While Cole’s more lyrical style of rapping is not exactly my favorite, I have found myself enjoying For All the Dogs despite me not being a big fan of Drake either. However, something about Might Delete Later just doesn’t sit right with me.
On paper, it’s generally a good album, but I just didn’t find myself enjoying the album. With almost every song, I was ready for it to end and I was resisting the urge to skip it and I find it hard to sit down and listen to the whole thing despite it being just 12 tracks long. I also think that this album didn’t have any cohesion or connection due to it being mostly an E.P. consisting of throw away songs.
The features throughout the album were pretty underwhelming in my opinion, no big or interesting names, which makes sense for an album of throw aways but it was definitely a shame to see. I think that some good features could have definitely elevated this album and made it better, but I digress.
Critical reception of this album was not great either. I only really saw people talking for a day or so and early streaming numbers on Spotify don’t seem too impressive either. I think that many other rap fans agree with my sentiment that this album wasn’t anything special or a worthwhile listen.
I also think it’s crucial to talk about the diss that J. Cole had at the end of his album. 7 Minute Drill was the only recently made song on this album. I think that this song is not a great response. Kendrick took his time to prepare his diss after J.Cole’s words on First Person Shooter but with 7 Minute Drill, it was clear that it was very rushed.
I personally don’t understand the need for the rush because Kendrick took many months to call out J. Cole and there was no need for a whole album just 2 weeks after the Metro album. I also think that this entire tangle is clearly just done for clout and popularity as it gets people talking about the album. However, I personally think that it’s a detriment to the rap game as a whole as it causes unneeded fighting that bars us fans from getting some good collabs from our favorite artists.
Overall, I definitely didn’t enjoy this album. While I get that this is mostly an album of throwaways, I don’t think that J. Cole had to rush to drop this in order to respond to Kendrick. I think that this album didn’t add anything of value to the rap scene and just continues to perpetuate bad habits between rappers that doesn’t allow us to listen to good music.
