| "High for Hours" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Single byJ. Cole | ||||
| Released | January 18, 2017 | |||
| Recorded | 2015 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 4:11 | |||
| Label | ||||
| Songwriter | Jermaine Cole | |||
| Producers |
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| J. Cole singles chronology | ||||
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"High for Hours" is a song by American rapperJ. Cole. The song was released as a single on January 18, 2017. It was produced byElite, 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'sSoundCloud page onMartin 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 withBarack Obama.[2]
ProducerElite spoke about the song in an interview withDJBooth 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 forChance The Rapper andNoname—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 beforeObama left office, so it still kinda had some relevancy.
| Chart (2017) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| New Zealand Heatseekers (RMNZ)[3] | 5 |
| USBubbling Under Hot 100 (Billboard)[4] | 22 |
