On Thursday, Noname released a new Madlib-produced track called ‘Song 33’, seemingly in response to J. Cole’s latest single, ‘Snow on Tha Bluff’. “Little did I know all my reading would be a bother/ It’s trans women being murdered and this is all he can offer?” she rapped. Yesterday, she took to Twitter to issue an apology for responding in the song.
“i’ve been thinking a lot about it and i am not proud of myself for responding with song 33,” she wrote. “i tried to use it as a moment to draw attention back to the issues i care about but i didn’t have to respond. my ego got the best of me. i apologize for any further distraction this caused.”
She explained that she doesn’t plan to take the song down, but will donate her share of the earnings to mutual aid funds. “madlib killed that beat and i see there’s a lot of people that resonate with the words so i’m leaving it up but i’ll be donating my portion of the songs earnings to various mutual aid funds. black radical unity.”
Neither Cole nor Noname explicitly name each other on their tracks. Recently, Cole wrote on Twitter: “She has done and is doing the reading and the listening and the learning on the path that she truly believes is the correct one for our people. We may not agree with each other but we gotta be gentle with each other.”
madlib killed that beat and i see there’s a lot of people that resonate with the words so i’m leaving it up but i’ll be donating my portion of the songs earnings to various mutual aid funds. black radical unity ✊🏾
— Noname (@noname) June 21, 2020
