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J. Cole On “Brooklyn” Beat He Made for Jay-Z, To Re-Shoot “Crooked Smile” Video

blame it on Shake August 21, 2013
jcole-jayz-backstage

Back in April, during a breakdown of the production of his “Power Trip” single with Miguel, J. Cole previewed a beat he created for Jay-Z. Four months later and we’ve yet to hear anything regarding the song. Talking with UHTN, Cole says he’s clueless on if something would actually be recorded to it, but if Hov doesn’t claim it, he will.

Of course he heard it. He has that beat. He was supposed to do something on it but you gotta ask him what happened to it though. In my eyes that was supposed to be the first song he came out to when he opened up The Barclays Center, that’s what I made it for. I wanted it to be the whole anthem for the entire Brooklyn. I pictured him coming out to that but I think he was in like Daddy mode so he probably wasn’t in rap mode at that time. He’s still got that beat. If he doesn’t rap on it, I’m going to rap on it.

During the same promo run — in support of his track “Miss America” being included in UBISOFT’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist soundtrack — Jermaine Cole revealed to VIBE/Miss Info’s Mikey Fresh that he is re-shooting his “Crooked Smile” video, with the new version including Chili and having a story concept.

We have to re-shoot it. It came out nice but it just didn’t come out exactly how I wanted. It’s such an important song so I want the visual to match. If this was my first video than I would have panicked. We had to re-shoot “Work Out,” too.

He also believes the success of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop” opened the door for “Crooked Smile” to appear on Pop radio.

[“Crooked Smile”] deserves to be the number one record in the country. I think Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” gave me hope for a song like this. I think he kinda… as weird as it is, and it’s always happens like this, the White boys got to open the door for Black people at White radio. It happened with Elvis, Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke, and now hopefully Macklemore with a song like “Thrift Shop” can allow “Crooked Smile” to get its proper shine at Pop Radio. Honestly, you can’t name me many songs better than… I don’t mean to sound crazy, but better than “Power Trip” as singles. They should have gave it a chance at Pop radio. All these Pop PDs weren’t giving rap a chance at all.

Born Sinner in stores now.