Hours before turning 41 years old, J. Cole released a four-pack of new freestyles hosted by DJ Clue on Tuesday (Jan. 27). Packaged as the Birthday Blizzard ’26, the EP is available on Cole’s website for as little as $1.
The surprise drop includes the “Bronx Zoo Freestyle,” “Golden Goose,” “Winter Storm” and “99 Build Freestyle.”
One freestyle finds Cole effortlessly flowing over the classic Stevie J-produced instrumental to Diddy’s “Victory” featuring The Notorious B.I.G. and Busta Rhymes.
On another track, Cole appears to address his apology to Kendrick Lamar and bowing out of a feud in April 2024 with the Compton legend. The Dreamville rapper initially dissed K. Dot on “7 Minute Drill,” but ended up scrubbing the Might Delete Later mixtape cut from streaming services and apologized to Lamar onstage at his Dreamville Festival.
“I used to be top, see, the apology dropped me way out of the top three, no problem, I’m probably my best when they doubt me,” Cole raps. “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.”
Birthday Blizzard ’26 serves as an appetizer for fans while setting the stage for Cole’s anticipated The Fall-Off album, which is set to arrive on Feb. 6.
When announcing the LP earlier in January, Cole released an accompanying “Disc 2 Track 2” single, which found him shrewdly rapping his life’s story in reverse.
J. Cole’s last album, The Off-Season, arrived in May 2021 and topped the Billboard 200 with 282,000 total album-equivalent units earned.
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