J. Cole Announces ‘The Off-Season’ Release Date

J. Cole has put a date on it.

The Dreamville boss has officially announced that his sixth studio album The Off-Season will drop Friday, May 14. He returned to Twitter on Tuesday to reveal the date along with the cover art, which finds Cole standing in front of a burning basketball hoop.

“Just know this was years in the making,” he told fans. “My new album The Off-Season available everywhere 5/14.”

Last week, Bas claimed that Cole was planning to release the project in the next two weeks and shared a photo of Cole in the studio. The post was deleted, but days later, Cole took to Instagram to share an update.

“Just rode through the city to The Off-Season,” he wrote. “Dawg… Too excited.”

On Monday, he posted another message: “Confidence through the roof.”

The Off-Season marks Cole’s first solo album since 2018’s chart-topping KOD. Last summer, he dropped two singles, “The Climb Back” and “Lion King on Ice,” along with the politically-charged track “Snow on Tha Bluff.”

Back in December, Cole revealed that his next project would be The Off-Season, followed by It’s a Boy and his long-awaited album The Fall Off, after which he may retire.