J. Cole officially announced his long-awaited The Fall-Off album via a narration-heavy video this week, and with it came a swiftly and widely asked question: Whose voice is that?
“Everything is supposed to go away eventually,” the voice in question says in the video. “You see this especially in show business with famous actors or musicians, and it’s like, ‘Oh, this guy used to be famous and then he fell off. What happened?’ They wanna point to, ‘They did this and this, and they made some sort of mistake’ instead of thinking, look, it’s kind of crazy they got famous in the first place.”
The narration continues: “So few people reach that level that, yes, of course it’s not gonna last forever. Because somebody else has to take that spot. That’s how show business has been since forever. But no, they always say, ‘Oh, that guy fell off.’ They wanna look down on him for just going through the natural cycle of rising and falling.”
So, who are we hearing? The identity of the narrator has since been confirmed as comedian Dan Harumi, who in May 2025 shared a video to YouTube titled “How Long Is America Supposed to Last?” In the video, seen below, Harumi speaks about the natural ebb and flow of not only fame, but everything from businesses to, yes, the United States.
“So maybe we should just think about America as a pop-up business,” Harumi says in a portion of the video that did not make its way into Cole’s announcement. “It’s like, hey, we’re gonna open up a thing and it’s gonna last for a while and then when it stops working, we’re gonna do a new thing because clearly what we’re doing now is not working. So let’s just take what we have and make something new.”
In an X post shared shortly after Cole’s announcement, Harumi said he was “honored to be part of this.”
For now, it’s not clear whether Harumi’s voice will ultimately be featured on the album itself. We’ll find out next month.
