Rap artist Noname knows it’s now deeper than tweets. The hip-hop entertainer has come forward to address J. Cole‘s “Snow on tha Bluff” song fired her way with the newly released “Song 33” tune.
Noname x Madlib
Heading into Friday, Noname came through with her hard-hitting response record. Produced by Madlib, she focuses her attention on questioning Cole getting at her while black people continue to deal with oppression and brutality across the nation.
Noname has released her first solo song of the year. “Song 33” references the killings of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter activist Oluwatoyin Salau and also appears to address J. Cole’s new track, “Snow on Tha Bluff.” On the Madlib-produced single, the Chicago rapper discusses Salau’s disappearance and killing. “A baby just 19/I know I dream all black/I seen her everything immortalized in tweets, all caps/They say they found her dead,” she raps. “One girl missing another one go missing/One girl missing another. (Rolling Stone)
High-Key Details
On Wednesday, Chicago’s Chance The Rapper spoke on the entire situation. While he said he wouldn’t pick sides, he did share his issues with Cole speaking out on an entire ‘diss’ song.
“Yet another L for men masking patriarchy and gaslighting as contructive criticism. … They both my peoples but only one of them put out a whole song talking about how the other needs to reconsider their tone and attitude in order to save the world. It’s not constructive and undermines all the work Noname has done. It’s not BWs job to spoon feed us. We grown … Everybody’s argument on either side is, we can’t personally attack each other if we really want to see a revolution. I can agree with that and can apply it in my own life. I wish we could learn that w/o two artists I admire having a public dispute.” -Chance The Rapper’s Twitter
Wait, There’s More
Late Tuesday night, Jermaine came through with his unexpected audio gem. While the song primarily focuses on the protests going on around the country against police brutality, he appears to take direct aim at Noname for publicly sending out subliminal tweets aimed at artists like himself and Kendrick Lamar.
“J. Cole’s rumoured shots/criticisms on rapper Noname…” -AllLoveHipHop’s Twitter
Before You Go
Instead of staying silent after the song dropped, Cole defended his wordplay. J hit up Twitter to say he meant every bar off the must-hear tune and also encouraged people to follow Noname.
“Morning. I stand behind every word of the song that dropped last night. … Follow @noname . I love and honor her as a leader in these times. She has done and is doing the reading and the listening and the learning on the path that she truly believes is the correct one for our people. Meanwhile a nigga like me just be rapping. … I haven’t done a lot of reading and I don’t feel well equipped as a leader in these times. But I do a lot of thinking. And I appreciate her and others like her because they challenge my beliefs and I feel that in these times that’s important. … We may not agree with each other but we gotta be gentle with each other. -J. Cole’s Twitter