J. Cole Drops Surprise 'Birthday Blizzard '26' Freestyles

Ahead of the release of his new album, The Fall-Off next week, rapper J. Cole dropped a surprise EP of freestyles hosted by DJ Clue to celebrate his 41st birthday on Jan. 28.

Birthday Blizzard ’26 is for sale for $1 or on a pay-what-you-want basis on his website.

Among the freestyle tracks is one called “Bronx Zoo Freestyle” and what appears to be a further insight on the rapper’s feud with Kendrick Lamar. All of this stemmed from Lamar’s take on being an exception of the rap “Big 3” label that included himself, Cole and rapper Drake in 2023. The North Carolina rapper then released “7 Minute Drill,” but then later made a public apology to Lamar at the music festival “Dreamville Fest” in April 2024.

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“Bronx Zoo Freestyle” picks up a bit where that left off.

“The top ain’t really what I thought it would be/So I jumped off and landed back at the bottom and restarted at a level where I wasn’t regarded as much/Just to climb past them again and tell them all to keep up,” Cole delivers on the freestyle before declaring, “I used to be top, see, the apology dropped me way out of the top 3/No problem, I’m probably my best when they doubt me.”

Cole’s seventh studio album, The Fall-Off, will be out Feb. 6. In a teaser announcing the upcoming album, the artist is seen washing his car and eating solo at a Waffle House.

An unnamed voice also talks over the video, saying, “Oh, this guy used to be famous and then he fell off. What happened?” before teasing a possible song on the album at the end of the video.

J. Cole also released a single and music video for the upcoming album, titled “THE FALL-OFF… DISC 2 TRACK 2.” You can watch that below.

J. Cole Drops Surprise ‘Birthday Blizzard ’26’ Freestyles was originally published on hiphopnc.com