Wow, I love J. Cole and shout out to him for making this for dropping this new album with barely any warning. I decided to do a review of his newest album, "KOD." because why not? I'll be doing a live review of each of the songs, and I'm so excited to see what all the hype is about!!!

1. "Intro"

So, J. Cole usually has some pretty good intros that set the mood for the rest of the tracks. Like the intro on "Forest Hills Drive"? Ingenious. I liked the Intro on "KOD" a lot. It was a lot different, but at the same time... it was so typical J. Cole. I like the fact that he spoke about newborns because inevitably, that's what we all are: just grown up versions of newborns, who have only two sets of emotions, basically. This song is really just about having real, human emotions and that we need to remember to deal with it. Life is extremely too ephemeral to just sit around and cry about our problems. I also LOVE the transition into the next song, "KOD"

"Can someone please turn off my mind? My thoughts are racing all the time."

2. "KOD"

Honestly, when I heard "KOD" for the first, I didn't like it too much. I don't know, it's just not appealing to me and it's really just Cole rapping over a bunch of beats, which in my opinion, is kind of boring. When they started listing all of the drugs I was like, "umm... OK" but when they said love at the end, it honestly sounded so cliche to me. I felt like I was listening to a Rupi Kaur poem. No shade though. For the first actual song, it was disappointing, but he DID THAT for "Photograph."

3. "Photograph"

Again, this song was so much more appealing to me because there was actually a soft melody in the background. To me, it sounded like a lot of J. Cole's other music, which I appreciated. This song reminded me of my favorite song, "You Don't Know My Name" by Alicia Keys. It's just about liking someone who you barely even know and you're grieved with anxiety because you like them so much. There is an underlying message to this song though, about how our relationships literally revolve around social media, and it's sad because we don't have any genuine connections anymore. Everyone's trying to one-up each other and they put their whole relationships out there for everyone to see. It's sad.

4. "The Cut Off"

I LOVE THE BEAT FOR "THE CUT OFF." This sounds like the instrumental will be an amazing study song for me. LIke I love the chill vibes of this song, and it's literally something I can imagine playing while I'm driving in my car on a warm summer day with the sun setting ahead of me. Beautiful. The pre-chorus, "time will tell who is on my side" is absolutely beautiful.

5. "ATM"

With "ATM," the woman from "Intro" is back. I thought he was just rapping like a normal new-age trap rapper about how much he loves money, but it's so much more than that. He's literally SUBBING those new age rappers I was just talking about. He says that if you have all the money, you'll become greedy and "it'll leave a hole in your heart." He literally says at the end of the song that money is "devil's pie" and that you can't take it with you when you die. All of this flaunting that people do with their big bills is useless if they're keeping it all for themselves and buying themselves expensive things to get more clout. Putting that money back into poor communities is honestly a better choice.

6. "Motiv8"

Wow, I hate the way this song sounds, but the message is so amazing. Once again, he's talking about the fake ass, new age rappers and all of their stans. For some people (and it seems to be prevalent in the entertainment industry), drugs and money rule their life. It sucks because J. Cole's persona in this song is using drugs and money as a way to escape his "demons" or problems, but it's not an effective way to deal with them. He only feels good when he pops a pill. I guess it's kind of like satire? Like the real J. Cole sees that this lifestyle isn't the way to go because it's a fake lifestyle; just like how he likes his girls au natural now, he thinks his life should be like that too.

7. "Kevin's Heart"

Wow, can he sing this song to me as a lullaby? HAHAHA, not actually, but it really is soothing. J. Cole really has been hitting all the hard points with these songs, lmao. I just saw a guy on the bus today with a hat that said, "BLACK BOYS DON'T CHEAT." AND I WAS LIKE, YAAASSS YOU GOOO!!! DON'T CHEAT!

Why do guys have hypermasculinity problems? This song is literally the epitome of that. All of y'all are worried about getting up your body count and fucking with so many girls and not caring about their feelings because y'all just wanna have sex. What's wrong with y'all? Honestly? Please, someone, tell me. It makes zero sense to me, and although I've never been a victim of cheating, I would literally lose my shit if it ever happened, because clearly, the boy is on drugs if he thinks it's an OK decision.

I've said this time and time again (and I don't care what your situation is), if you're already dating someone, don't cheat. And if you feel tempted to cheat, that means you really don't like the person that you're with and if you wanna fuck that other girl so bad, then maybe you should just be dating them. Point. Blank. Period. End.

All of you guys who cheat are a bunch of bums, for real. Grow up.

8. "BRACKETS"

OK so this song is literally what I was talking about before: celebrities (especially black celebrities who grew up in the ghetto) giving their money back to their communities. This is honestly a big sub at society and politics and the government. J. Cole was literally PREACHINGGGGG WITH THIS SONG. OK HE IS PREACHING. Have any of you ever thought about that sometimes? LIke, "where does my money really go for taxes?" because it's damn sure not helping fix our roads or build our public schools to be better or pay for library books or none of that junk. Capitalism sucks, guys. And sometimes I wish I was an economics major so I can just understand more about the money in the world around us because we literally know so little about it. And it's literally the thing that makes this entire world function.

"Maybe because the tax dollars that I make sure I send get spent hiring some teachers that don't look like them. And the curriculum be tricking them... got us learning about the heroes with the whitest of skin. One thing about the men that's controlling the pen, that write history, they always seem to white out their sins. And maybe we'll never see a black man in the White House again."

9. "Once an Addict - Interlude"

All I can say about this song is... Wow, oh my gosh. Like I don't even know what to say, and this wasn't even a long song but it was still SO HEAVY. It's like, what do you do and how are you suppose to take care of someone who's supposed to be taking care of you? It's really deep and you can literally hear the pain in his voice as he reminisces these moments. In times like this we feel hopeless; like there's nothing we can do.

"Sometimes I think pain is just a lack of understanding... God must feel no pain"

10. "FRIENDS"

LMAO OMG HE SAID BLAME IT ON TRUMP!!! BLAME IT ON CLINTON!!! HE'S REALLY CALLING EVERYONE OUT ON THIS ALBUM AND I AM HERE FOR IT.

I didn't like this song that much, but the message is really deep. I feel as though in the black community, we get told to push our problems aside and we're told to just deal with certain things. Black men are told that they can't cry because it's not manly. Black women have built up anger, which I like to think is because of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. But also, it's because our girls are literally hypersexualized from such a young age and they have this stereotype of "angry black girl" and so whenever they feel a certain way, it's not because they have an actual problem that they have to deal with; it's because that's their stereotype.

A lot of people (of all races) don't know how to deal with their emotions properly and they just smoke it away like it's nothing. But I'm seeing a trend in a lot of these songs. J. Cole is trying to say that the drugs will not take the pain away.

11. "Window Pain"

I almost cried just hearing the little boy talk about his experiences.

But I liked this song because we can literally hear J. Cole's inner thoughts. It's almost as if he tore a piece of his diary and just made it into a song. But the little kid at the end and the beginning hit me hard, man. So cute. But it's also interesting that they have their own perceptions of the world, and they have only experienced so little. And you can't help but realize that they'll soon understand why exactly some things are the way they are in this world.

"Just because your dick can spray semen, it doesn't' mean that you're ready to let go of your childish ways."

12. "1985 'Intro to The Fall Off'"

I like that J. Cole talks about his own immaturity in the first part of this song. We're always cracking on the young people for making stupid decisions, but it's not their fault — they still have a lot of maturing to do.

ONCE AGAIN subbing ALL OF THEM TRAP RAPPERS, LOL. I literally think about this all the time. LIke yeah sure, Migos' (for example) songs are catchy and everything, but what is their impact on the young people's ears? That we should all be chasing money and drugs and sex? Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but we should be promoting positive things. Kids need to realize that money isn't everything and that if they do have sex, it should be safe sex.

But everything J. Cole is saying is true: all of these people (of all races) try so hard because apparently, black culture is pop culture. But at the end of the day, they only end up seeing black people as the same. They're going to see them as people that live lifestyles that are similar to whatever these trap artists are promoting.

Wow, J. Cole really was preaching on this entire album and now I understand what the hype was about with this album because he was really sub-tweeing EVERYONE. IT WAS SO GOOD! And I can't wait to see him in concert whenever he decides to go on tour, because best believe that me and my social activist self will be rapping every single lyric. His albums just keep getting better and better.