J. Cole just dropped a track that is all but too appropriate for Martin Luther King Day.
With the quality and content 4 Your Eyez Only still being debated about, Cole blesses us with yet another track that he probably should’ve included on the album.
On “High For Hours” Cole reads straight from the newspapers addressing a range of heavy topics including racism, classism, police brutality and the idea of sparking revolution via government overthrow.
However, Cole’s penwork gets very direct in the second verse when he mentions a meeting that he had with President Obama. First, he sets himself apart from his rap peers who have been invited to sit with him by bringing up that he actually paid to see him talk. From there he picks up where his verse on “Neighbors” left off where he spoke of not wanting a picture with the President, but an actual conversation.
Here how it went:
I had a convo with the president, I paid to go and see him
Thinking bout the things I said I’d say when I would see him
Feeling nervous, sitting in a room full of white folks
Thinking about the black man plight, think I might choke, nope
Raised my hand and asked a man a question
‘Does he see the struggles of his brothers in oppression?
And if so, if you got all the power in the clout as the president
What’s keeping you from helping niggas out?’
Well I didn’t say nigga, but you catch my drift
He look me in my eyes and spoke and he was rather swift
He broke the issues down and showed me he was well aware
I got the vibe he was sincere and that the brother cared
But dawg you in the chair, what’s the hold up?
He said there’s things that I wanna fix
But you know this shit nigga, politics
Don’t stop fighting and don’t stop believing
You can make the world better for your kids before you leave it
In all eight years of the Obama presidency, this right here might be the best rap verse we’ve heard about it. Of course, plenty of rappers have name dropped Obama in witty one-liners. Even more rappers have praised him and few have dared to criticize him. But to be able to talk to the man and then deliver some rhymes about the meeting in a transparent way? That’s special.
Listen to the entire track below. Don’t sleep on the third and final verse either.
Photo: WENN.com
