KOD May Mark The Death Of The “J. Cole Went Platinum With No Features” Meme (But Probably Not)
“J. Cole went platinum with no features.” The rapper’s fans repeated that phrase so often after the undeniable success of his guest-free 2014 Forest Hills Drive that it became a meme. When his featureless follow-up 4 Your Eyez Only also went platinum, the meme persisted. Sadly, I am here to report that this beloved joke may be dead soon (and not just because we as a society already beat it to death).
Cole just shared the cover art and tracklist for KOD, the album he’s releasing at the end of the week. The artwork is visible above. The tracklist is below, and you may be surprised to learn that it contains two guest features by someone named Kill Edward.
So is this the end of the beloved “J. Cole went platinum with no features” meme? Quoth Lee Corso: Not so fast, my friend! Kill Edward is so obscure that he only has one song on Genius besides these two Cole features. It’s called “Tidal Wave (Just A Little Reference),” and when I started writing this post Genius didn’t even have it transcribed. They do now, and the transcription is apparently based on this freshly uploaded YouTube that features the KOD album art and sounds suspiciously like J. Cole:
Also, when you search “Kill Edward” and “Tidal Wave” together, Google pulls up a now-deleted upload of the song captioned like so: “kill edward- tidal wave( just a reference) sped up is really j cole.” See?
So don’t fear: Kill Edward is probably just a J. Cole alter ego, and the “J. Cole went platinum with no features” meme will likely persist as long as KOD goes platinum — which will almost certainly happen before this year is out. We will be sure to update you when it does.
Here’s that KOD tracklist, by the way: