High for Hours

"High for Hours" is a song by American rapper J. Cole. The song was released as a single on January 18, 2017. "High for Hours" was produced by Elite, with co-production from Cam O'bi.[1] The song was considered for Cole's fourth studio album, 4 Your Eyez Only, but was not included. It was uploaded to Cole's SoundCloud page on Martin Luther King Day, January 16, 2017, and has over 11 million plays on SoundCloud as of October 2018. It treats themes including oppression, revolution, and a meeting with Barack Obama.[2]

"High for Hours"
Single by J. Cole
ReleasedJanuary 18, 2017
Recorded2015
Genre
Length4:11
Label
Songwriter(s)Jermaine Cole
Producer(s)
  • Elite
  • Cam O'bi
J. Cole singles chronology
"Deja Vu"
(2017)		 "High for Hours"
(2017)		 "Neighbors"
(2017)

Background

Producer Elite spoke about the song in an interview with DJBooth saying:

That one, we were on the Forest Hills Drive tour. Me and Cam [O'bi]—he's amazing, he's done a lot of stuff for Chance The Rapper and Noname—were on the tour bus making beats. Cole was in his hotel room, he texted me like, 'I need a beat.' He was writing to some instrumental, I forgot what it was but it was a song that was already out. He was like, 'I need a beat in this tempo.'

So me and Cam started coming up with stuff, working on drums and basslines, just trying to achieve a similar feel to what he was describing to us. We hadn't heard the verses, though. Maybe like an hour later, he came on the bus and heard what we were doing, gave us a little guidance as far as what to change. He actually had five verses to that song—he was talking about similar stuff—but we all decided like, 'alright, maybe you don't need these two, I think people get the point' [laughs]. Once he gets in the zone, he keeps going, that's the thing.

That was a song that had been sitting around for a while. It was considered for the album but it didn't fit the narrative, so we held off on it and decided to throw it out there before Obama left office, so it still kinda had some relevancy.

Critical reception

Writing for Odyssey, Paul Watson Jr. called the track an "emotional journey" saying, "From a personal perspective, this four-and-a-half minute, three-verse song took me on a roller coaster of different emotional synapses, which isn’t by any means uncharacteristic of Cole. What was interesting, however, was the cerebral approach to lyrics Cole took, which is usually a trait attributed to Kendrick Lamar, while simultaneously maintaining his characteristic simplicity."[3]

Chart performance
Chart (2017) Peak
position
New Zealand Heatseekers (RMNZ)[4] 5
US Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles (Billboard)[5] 22
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References
  1. "Beat Break: Dreamville's Elite Shares the Story Behind His 5 Biggest Songs". DJBooth. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
  2. Blistein, Jon (January 17, 2017). "Hear J. Cole Reflect on Oppression, Obama, Revolution on 'High for Hours'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved October 22, 2018.
  3. Watson Jr., Paul (January 21, 2017). "The Emotional Journey Of J. Cole's "High For Hours"". Odyssey. Retrieved October 20, 2018.
  4. "NZ Heatseekers Singles Chart". Recorded Music NZ. January 30, 2017. Retrieved January 30, 2017.
  5. "J. Cole Chart History (Bubbling Under Hot 100)". Billboard.
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