J. Cole takes aim at artists who use bots to boost their streams in a new freestyle released as part of his surprise-dropped Birthday Blizzard '26 project.
The DJ Clue-hosted EP arrived this week in the run-up to Cole’s The Fall-Off album, out early next month. On “Golden Goose Freestyle,” Cole questions the oft-discussed disparity between some artists’ streaming numbers and their tour draw, like so:
"If the streams say you’re winnin’, why your tours is losin’?
When the math ain’t mathin’, of course you’re juicin’
That mean the bots is boostin’"
Cole, to be clear, doesn’t get specific in terms of who he believes may be boosting their numbers through the use of bots. The topic has been a hot one industry-wide for some time now, with labels and streamers both speaking out in the past. In November of last year, a Spotify spokesperson said the platform “in no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming.”
Elsewhere in the new freestyle, available here as a pay-what-you-want exclusive, Cole also mentions Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge (“For crumbs, dumb n***as sold their soul to Lucian”) and reaffirms his lack of interest in fame (“I despise my celebrity”).
The latter issue seemingly serves as a focal point for the larger concept behind The Fall-Off, set for a Feb. 6 rollout. In a video released earlier this month announcing the album’s drop date, an excerpt from a May 2025 YouTube video from comedian Dan Harumi is used as narration.
In it, Harumi discusses the inherent impermanence of the highest levels of fame, noting that there’s a fallacy to those who argue “famous actors or musicians” haven fallen off at a certain point in their trajectory. Instead, per Harumi, such cases are simply part of “the natural cycle of rising and falling.”