THE NEW ALBUM FROM J. COLE TACKLES ADDICTION 

Rapper J. Cole has a new album that deals with addiction, and it’s called KOD. The name has several meanings, and it can either stand for Kids on Drugs, King Overdosed, or Kill Our Demons. The album doesn’t just deal with addiction to drugs, but money as well. 

As the Daily Titan writes of the KOD album, “It’s unclear if most of the songs are personal to J. Cole’s experiences, but they act as a warning of how easy it is to become a slave to the drugs often glorified in the music industry.” And as this review points out, the first lines of the album are, “Can someone please turn off my mind…I’m trapped inside myself…”  

In reviewing the KOD album, Spin Magazine called it “a commendable examination of addiction,” and that “over the course of 42 minutes, Cole takes aim at the many ways a person can spiral. The habits laid out bear a loose resemblance to the capital vices – pride, greed, gluttony, sloth, lust, envy, and wrath.” 

Spin was especially taken with the song Once An Addict, which they wrote is a “heartbreaking” song about “children abandoned – emotionally and / or physically – by parents suffering from addiction.”  

While not every review of the KOD album is favorable, it is doing very well, with Hot New Hip Hip reporting that it already broke Spotify’s first-day single streaming record, and it also broke Spotify and Apple Music’s first-day album stream records. (Not to mention this report says that Cole couldn’t find a copy of his album in stores.) With a lot of hip-hop artists speaking out against addiction, especially in the wake of the death of Lil Peep, Cole’s anti-drug message is apparently getting out into the world loud and clear.