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J. Cole has a really cool story behind the origin of his new song.
On Wednesday night, January 18, the Dreamville founder released his first track of 2023 "Procrastination (Broke)" exclusively on YouTube. According to the song's cover art, Cole made the record while he was struggling to find motivation. During his mission to cook up something new, he simply hopped on YouTube and searched "J. Cole type beat." The first instrumental he found was created by producer Bvtman. After he was inspired by the beat, Cole allowed the producer to drop the song exclusively on his YouTube channel as a token of his gratitude.
“This song should live on your channel and serve as a thank you to you and every producer out there cooking up and sharing their work with the world," Cole texted Bvtman, who used the message as the song's cover art. "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."
"On a day when I couldn’t find much motivation, I was looking for anything to inspire me," Cole continued. "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. This is some s**t 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 song arrives over a week after Cole cleared his Instagram to make way for something new. It's the first solo track he's released since he contributed to Dreamville's D-Day mixtape last April. It also stirs up more hype behind his highly-anticipated follow-up to 2021's The Off-Season.
Listen to "Procrastination (Broke)" below.
WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE