With a surprise release, J. Cole is letting fans make it through the week. On Wednesday night (Jan. 18), producer Bvtman released the rapper's new tune "Procrastination (Broke)," together with a text message from Cole in which he emphasizes that the music wasn't supposed to be published.
He chose to remove it as a "thank you" to Bvtman and "every producer out there cooking up and sharing their work with the world."
“It’s a million artists out there right now just like me, hungry and searching every day for something to spark a word, a melody, a hook, a verse, a punchline, a way to vent, or a way to cut through,” the text reads. “On a day when I couldn’t find much motivation, I was looking for anything to inspire me. Out of curiosity, I typed in ‘J. Cole type beat’ into YouTube. Yours was the first I saw. I pressed play, focused, and wrote this.”
He concluded by writing, “This is some s— that would normally stay in the vault, but I don’t want to hold onto the music like that no more. This is for you and whoever else need to hear it. God bless bro and keep doing what you do!”
The new track arrives more than a year after J. Cole's sixth studio album, The Off-Season, was released in 2021 via Dreamville/Roc Nation/Interscope. On the Billboard 200 albums list on May 29, 2021, the album debuted at No. 1. KOD (2018), 4 Your Eyez Only (2016), 2014 Forest Hills Drive (2014), Born Sinner (2013), and Cole World: The Sideline Story (2011) all charted at the top of the Billboard 200.