Last year was one of ups and downs for J Cole. On one hand, he became a punchline amid the Drake / Kendrick Lamar feud, but by most other measures, it was a massive success; celebrating 10 years of one of his most beloved projects and earning a Grammy nod for his most recent mixtape. If anything, the darker side of his 2024 added a new “chip on the shoulder” to his 2025 material, highlighted by the most recent J Cole single, “cLOUDs.”
An S-Tier Lyrical Exercise For J Cole On “cLOUDs”
Part of what continues to make Cole compelling, and indeed any rapper in current GOAT discussions, is his ability to tap into the unexpected. Scores of MCs can craft strings of multi-syllabic rhymes, but by the third instance of any particular scheme, you more or less know how they’ll deploy the fourth. Conversely, the North Carolina product’s greatest strength is lyrical footwork, bouncing off schemes with extreme dexterity or reaching earlier into verses to re-establish them as dominant themes anew.
Further, he long ago shed hard commitment to how words are supposed to be said, ditching them in the name of more complex dialogue: “Fiends turn to kings, dreams turn to things tangible / My hands are full with grands I pulled / From stanzas, no, I can’t go slow, I’m Sandra Bull.”
Another piece of intrigue that’ll scratch an itch for long-time J Cole devotees on “cLOUDs” is the return of the woozy tenor and effects heard on the chorus, a tacit callback to the KOD era. Given the subject matter, it’s a fitting choice, equally evoking the nostalgic remembrance of acquaintances past that the rapper delved deep into for 2014 Forest Hills Drive.
Wiz Khalifa Adds An Intriguing Face To The Rapper’s Oeuvre
To that substance-infused point, this brings us to including Wiz Khalifa in this track’s rollout. Though squarely of the same era and generation (Cole and Khalifa shared 2010 XXL Freshman honors), they represent different sides of the 2010s mainstream. The Pittsburgh product certainly has his box-office material in smashes like “Black & Yellow” or “We Dem Boyz,” but his lasting cultural impact likely comes from the hazy smoke jams from Kush & OJ and similar projects. It’s not entirely anathema to the conscious-gone-mainstream bend of Cole, but just as Curren$y and Kendrick Lamar rarely intersect, nor Drake and Dom Kennedy, this link-up likely wasn’t on many bingo cards.
Khalifa teased his contributions about a week before J Cole himself posted the “cLOUDS” remix, uniting their standalone versions and continuing a rollout strategy where the Dreamville’s has hosted his loose releases entirely on his webpage—notably, the 2014 Forest Hills Drive deluxe hit streaming a few weeks after surfacing in this way.
For Wiz’s actual performance, the hook bridges the difference in each artist’s usual subject matter, Khalifa playing the role of Cole’s friends he references. Even if the Pennsylvania MC doesn’t dalliance with the same complex lyrical style as Cole, their “elder statesman” status in current hip-hop nonetheless unites them, and it’s impossible not to smile given the sheer commercial and cultural success housed on their eventual first collaboration.
You can catch “cLOUDs” on the J Cole blog inevitable.live.
