KOD (album)
2018 album by J. Cole

KOD (an initialism for Kids on Drugs, King Overdosed and Kill Our Demons) is the fifth studio album by American rapper J. Cole. It was released on April 20, 2018, through Dreamville Records, Roc Nation and Interscope Records.
The majority of the album's production was handled by Cole himself, along with others such as T-Minus, Mark Pelli, BLVK and Ron Gilmore. The album incorporates elements of jazz rap and trap. Cole has stated that the production and rhyme schemes used throughout the album were inspired by SoundCloud rap. The album explores a variety of topics including drug abuse, addiction, depression, greed, African-American culture, and taxation in the United States.
The album was supported by two singles: "KOD" and "ATM", both of which debuted in the top 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100. In August 2018, Cole embarked on the KOD Tour to promote the album.
KOD received positive reviews from critics and debuted atop the US Billboard 200, selling 397,000 album-equivalent units in its first week (174,000 coming from pure sales), earning Cole his fifth consecutive number-one album in the country. It also broke several streaming records.
The public source identifies “KOD (album)” as 2018 album by J. Cole. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around album and Cole.
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This entry incorporates text from “KOD (album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.