(Photo By WordPress.Com)
With a new record deal, hot single, and bright future ahead of him; rapper J. Cole should be on top of the world right now. However, the inevitable buzz kill has surfaced. The rapper is taking fire for his new video "Who Dat." Apparently, the appearance of high school and college students in his video is not going over well. The rapper used students from EE Smith High School and Fayetteville State University to show a little love to his fellow North Carolina people. But school officials are not feeling the love, in fact they are highly upset. Officials say that the song and video are way too: violent, explicit, and sexual to be associated with their institutions. Also, they are offended by the use of the schools' logos in the piece and are claiming that J. Cole had no permission to use them. They feel that the video portrays the city and the schools in a very negative light and are pushing to have the video pulled from the net immediately.
Now first response to this would be, why did the schools even give the students permission to be in the video at all then? According to school Administrators, the students were not fully approved to be in the video. The students got waivers and stuff but never got things cleared with the higher-ups of the high school or the university. The lack of approval was overlooked though, because the Administrators thought the video would be good promotion for the schools and attract new members. Now officials feel that the exact opposite has happened. They feel that people will see the video and think the worst of the students due to the nature of the track. There has been no word from J. Cole himself regarding this situation. Do the school officials have a reason to be upset or are they tripping? Peep the video below and decide for yourself. And if your still rocking with J. Cole, his debut album on Roc Nation is scheduled to be released around October 26, 2010.
I think this is ridiculous. The schools should have listened to the song prior to the students appearing in the video. They just got all blinded by the free publicity and potential money from new students. Now, they are probably catching some flack and need a scape goat. I agree that the younger children shouldn't have been a part of the project but it's not the end of the world. I'm sure a lot of the kids have been exposed to worse environments before. There is no need to pull/ban this video. What's done is done, I'd say just suck it up and let it go. Oh well, I wish J. Cole the best with this whole mess. -MinM
Comments