On Monday, J. Cole released one of his best music videos yet to his new single Middle Child. The video has a metaphoric sense which will have you wondering what he’s actually referencing. So in this article, I am going to break it down piece by piece. The video begins with the artist in a dark scene with his head down as the horns of the beat play. There is also shadows of a crowd sitting behind him, but none of their faces are clear yet. As the bass thumps, lightning clouds appear which create light onto the audience where you can now see them applauding. It appears as if the crowd is at an award show of some sort due to how formal they are dressed and the red carpet. J. Cole is in the middle of the scene as they cheer and applaud but it doesn’t appear to be for him. They seem as if they don’t notice that he’s even there.
In the following scene J. Cole remains in the middle (hints ‘Middle Child’) as a sea of dead bodies appear behind him in a morgue. The dead seem to still be nicely dressed as if they are the same characters from the previous scene. They now all have red mud on their shoes. This could represent many things, but my theory is due to them before being on a red carpet, the dirt represents that the fame is what killed them.
The next acknowledgeable location that J. Cole appears is in a open muddy field with a luxury Bentley SUV. Him and friends drive it through the mud at high speeds. For those of us “poor folks,” this scene may make you cringe. His line “The Bentley is dirty, my sneakers is dirty. But that’s how I like it,” correlates to this scene.
Debatably one of the best scenes of the music video, comes next. Cole is sitting in a red sofa chair in a log cabin. At first glance it’s confusing of how the scene connects until the camera pans out. Then appears 3 taxidermy heads of different rappers mounted on the wall. The first reads “Your favorite rapper.” Many people depict this as being that in rapping skills, J. Cole will murder your favorite rapper with his verses alone. The next plaque states “This Could Be You” as in if today’s rappers continue to chase after money and fame it could lead to their own death. Lastly, the final head reads “Ask For A Feature,” which many up and coming rappers do. They’ll do anything to be featured on a song with a relevant artist, even sell their soul.
Next, J. Cole is in the supermarket. My first time watching the music video I didn’t understand the relevance of it until I thought deeper. The market symbolizes how people try to buy his style. The scene later shows a white women buying a meat package full of black women’s features. She does so after she sees a lovely melaninated women dancing next to a fireplace in the same cabin that Cole was previously in. The flame represents the struggle that a black women must go through everyday but is unrecognized when others try to mimic it and turn it into their own, which brings us to the harsh realism of culture appropriation and the end of the video.
Cole and his visual directors Mez and Scott Lazer’s deep thought turned into a video full of hidden messages. It definitely stands as one of the best videos this year. Cole also uses his song Middle Child as warm up to all he has in store for 2019. I can’t wait to see his creativity hit more screens and his lyrics continue to highlight life and social issues.