New YouTube single release and 5 other times J.Cole showed up for the culture

J. Cole hasn’t released a song since 2021, but the hip-hop star kicked off the new year by dropping a track using a beat he found on YouTube from an unknown producer.

The new single, “Procrastination (Broke),” was released on Jan. 18 to the YouTube channel of an indie producer from Brooklyn named bvtman, who is a fan of the artist. As the story goes, J. Cole hit a creative block and was perusing the internet for inspiration when he searched “J. Cole type beat” on YouTube and came across bvtman’s instrumental.

“On a day when I couldn’t find much motivation, I was looking for anything to inspire me,” Cole wrote in a message to bvtman, GQ reports. “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.”

J. Cole decided to rap over the beat and gave bvtman permission to share it on his YouTube channel. “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 wrote, Hip Hop DX reports. “This is for you and whoever else need to hear it. God bless bro and keep doing what you do!”

Bvtman posted a response to his Instagram page. “It’s crazy how this happened,” he wrote. “Randomly driving on the high with my shorty and I get a text from @kingofqueenz25 saying Cole fuccs with my beats. I almost ain’t believe this was real life…. But it is.”

J. Cole is known for paying it forward and giving back to the community. Here are five ways the Grammy-winning artist has come through for the culture:

1. Before he became a global superstar, J. Cole was a basketball coach for pre-teens in New York City;
2. In 2011, Cole established the Dreamville Foundation to provide school supplies and encourage children in his hometown of Fayetteville, North Carolina to stay in school;
3. In 2014, he purchased his childhood home for $121,000 and announced plans to turn it into a safe space for single mothers. “My goal is to have that be a haven for families. So every two years a new family will come in, they live rent-free,” he said;
4. In 2018, he donated $10,000 to the Baltimore grassroots organization Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle as a part of Colin Kaepernick’s Million Dollar Pledge to charity;
5. In 2020, the rapper released his politically-charged single “Snow On The Bluff,” which is a response to racism, activism and police brutality in the U.S.

According to Hip Hop DX, Cole was the subject of speculation last month when he cleared his Instagram page, usually a signal that an artist announcement is imminent. Prognosticators believed that an album drop was in the works or the release of the “Creed III” soundtrack for which Cole’s Dreamville record label is the executive producer.

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