Might Delete Later
Mixtape by J. Cole
Released 5 April 2024
Hip Hop
Label – Cole World / Interscope
Rating – 2/10
No matter how diluted his output tends to be, J. Cole has never embarrassed himself like this before.
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I’ll preface this J. Cole review the way that I often do when speaking about him. The magic moment in his career – in which he transcends from skilled emcee to creator of something special – is, in my opinion, yet to happen. According to some folks, the current “big three” in hip hop consists of Cole, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar, but where creative output is concerned, it’s a “big one”.
Cole is consistently able to show off his chops. He did so on Born Sinner, he did so on 2014 Forest Hills Drive, he did so on The Off-Season. But the dude may as well be a battle rapper if he’s so determined receive the compliment “he raps well” with only the odd imaginative beat backing up.
Ready ’24 has one of the more focussed beats of new mixtape Might Delete Later, but it’s still the form of chipmunked soul that other hip hop artists have done better and to death. As it is a mixtape, you may as well throw creative endeavouring out of the window anyway and treat the release like a one-man cypher of sorts, with some cameos. You know, it’s what we may as well treat any J. Cole release as at this point, but Might Delete Later doesn’t even include much of what tends to make Cole at all worth listening to.
As he recites (most of) the alphabet on H.Y.B, only to leave out the letter ‘L’ because he never takes them (OR, he never takes M), I can assure you that I’m not laughing with him. As he uses triplets as a major irritant on Pricey, he rolls off some of his worst ever bars – “your pillow soft, so kill the boss talk / me to you’s a cyanide pill to a lil’ cough drop” / “lately, my biggest addiction been looking online / where somebody’s always offended, I’m sick of this crying” / “breaking news, I’ve officially enters my prime / which is real interesting, this is the point where a rapper would typically start to decline”. Yeah, about that…
He revisits this triplet flow on Sticks N Stonez, hardly displaying any diversity in the process, but at least he doesn’t big up Farrakhan on that track. If he wasn’t so repetitive and cringeworthy, one could forgive the dime-a-dozen trap beat of Huntin’ Wabbitz or the underdeveloped samples of Trae the Truth in Ibiza. But he is cringeworthy and he is repetitive. He is repetitive.
Let’s take a break from actual analysis and just listen some more annoying lyrics:
“We give specific instructions to bring out the bottles in stealth mode / I’m hearing there’s rats in the building, they saying it’s not up to par with the health code”. (Stealth Mode)
“I’m on a mission for this chicken”. (3001)
“I litter it like I can’t spell it”. (Pi)
“Is you a demon or is that demeanour for the gram? Tell us / they plead the fifth, I’m seeing hints of a trans fella / in cancel culture’s vicinity, he’s no killer, trust me / beneath his chosen identity, there is still a pussy”. (Pi)
“Ya’ll must be stupid, we finna go dumb on ‘em / just keep your ears open like Dumbo and them”. (Ab-Soul on Pi)
-By the way, Pi is specifically a cypher/freestyle-type track that exists for the emcees to show off. That’s what they come out with? What a shitshow.
As you can see, there is a bigger problem here than J. Cole simply forgetting how to be any good at his craft, bigger than underwhelming diss tracks (7 Minute Drill), bigger than padding out his bars with syllables to eventually arrive at a disappointing punchline. The bigger problem is Cole’s insistence on falling in line with Dave Chapelle-worship to the point where he’s lowering himself with contrived transphobic bars. It’s a shitty look, but par for the course on this shitty mixtape. Maybe on his next project, J. Cole will at least try to act like an adult.
Weakest track – Pi.
Rating – 2 out of 10
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I’m adding this to the review on 10/6/2024. I wanted to make some form of amendment to this review, pretty much because I hate the lack of focus that I placed on some of its biggest issues. It’s one thing to act so braggadocious on such a generic-sounding project, it’s another to litter that project with such disrespectful lyrics. J. Cole using transphobia to his gain is disappointing on its own, but his commitment to using it to completely alienate others makes Might Delete Later unlistenable. Since he namedrops Dave Chapelle, it seems as though he’s raging against cancel culture like any good idiot, but some lyrics appear to take aim at Kendrick Lamar’s Auntie Diaries, either his way of bullying Kendrick’s relative, or take advantage of transphobia for the sake of a rap feud. Regardless of the reason, it’s gross and he’s gross, somehow making his Anti-Semitism-implying love of Farrakhan – which is also dreadful – an afterthought in the process. I shouldn’t have even reviewed this mixtape; it’s not worth anyone’s time.
PEANUTBUTTERPOPE 