J Cole has a reputation for bringing elite rhymes and skilled guest vocals to other artists' songs, with some features such as "Johnny P's Caddy" going down in rap history books as the hardest in recent memory. Unfortunately, even J Cole can have a miss or two on his record, as evidenced by his feature on the recent Cash Cobain track "Grippy." "Grippy" has been universally panned by critics and fans of J Cole alike, with most listeners lamenting the awkward delivery, poor mixing, and especially cringe lyrics as major lowlights. Let's dive into a brief list of Cole's worst bars on the track, and examine what makes the song so awkward. Without further ado, here are 5 of the most cringe J Cole lyrics on "Grippy."
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5. Cole Gives Hippie A Whole New Meaning
Rappers often utilize shoddy wordplay to force a rhyme into place or paint a visual image. Most times, fans are willing to accept these instances and move right along. That is, as long as the tone and delivery of the awkward bars are jovial, and don't take themselves too seriously. On "Grippy," this is not the case, as J Cole opens his verse with a painful comparison between the words "hip" and "hippie." On the song, the Dreamville head honcho raps "Grippy, huh/ Grippy, I call her that 'cause it's grippy/ She thick in the hips, she a hippie." These lyrics are spoken with the comfortable vibrato of a man who didn't just spend the last month getting torn apart by rap fans for apologizing to Kendrick Lamar, and serve as a really painful first post-beef outing.
4. The Sloppy Similes Keep Going
As fans of J Cole, we all wish the awkward bars on "Grippy" would have ended with the hippie punch line, but things only get worse from there. Cole goes on to deliver one of the worst similes of his entire career with the bars "With a kissy emoji, she miss me/ When she see me, she say she gon' strip me/ She gon' chew on this stick like it's Wrigley's." In case you need those lyrics broken down, he's referencing Wrigley's chewing gum, in an allusion to a woman performing oral sex. It remains unclear, however, why J Cole thinks "chewing" is a term that belongs anywhere in the same universe as a bar about receiving oral, but that's his personal business.
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3. Cole Channels His Inner Ned Flanders
Without a doubt, the most heavily-memed bar on this record comes in the form of a borderline problematic lyric, in which J Cole raps "Mm, yеah, believe it or not likе Ripley's/ She said she was gay until I slayed, now she strictly dickly." Here J Cole suggests that he's such a powerful performer in the bedroom that he could convince a lesbian to turn straight. This would be an awkward bar for any rapper to deliver at any point in their career, but it's especially odd after Cole just faced backlash for some seemingly transphobic bars on his most recent release. Either way, fans have already started posting audio clips of this portion of the song alongside images of The Simpsons' Ned Flanders, as he delivers his classic lines like "Okilly dokilly."
2. Graphic Sexual Depictions Make The Track Nauseating
Some rap songs are specifically designed to be added to a bedroom playlist. While there's no way of knowing for sure if that was the intent that J Cole and Cash Cobain had in mind when they penned "Grippy," it certainly seems like they weren't shy about delivering graphic sexual imagery in their lyrics. As J Cole nears the merciful end of his cringe-inducing feature, he offers up the bars, "I gotta get you up out of them Vickies/ uh, like p**** so good, I just had an epiphany/ It's grippy and wet, you know I'm a vet, but you makin' me feel like a rookie/ How you make me tap out so swiftly?" Maybe in an alternate universe, somebody could consider these lyrics steamy, but currently, these bars are positively obnoxious.
1. The Verse Closes Out With An Awkward Refrain
Nearing the close of J Cole's verse on "Grippy" forces the listener to look inward and ask themselves what exactly Cole meant the last few years while promising The Fall Off. If this awkward and cringe-worthy refrain is anything to go by, that title may serve as much more than just the name of a long-awaited album. Cole closes out his verse by crooning "Like, b****, I'ma send all your kids to Disney/ hmm, hmm I'ma pay a lil' extra, make sure they meet Mickey/ hmm she a what? She a what, she a grippy/ huh she a what? She a what, she a grippy." Needless to say, this song has been getting a lot of attention from fans online, for all the wrong reasons. Even J Cole's most die-hard supporters are finding it impossible to defend his awkward bars on this latest verse.
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