Overview

J. Cole Luigi Reference refers to a 2021 hip-hop song by rapper J. Cole titled "95-South" that has lyrics referencing Mario and Luigi. In mid-May 2021 the night of J. Cole's album release, titled The Off-Season, lyrics to the first song resulted in "Luigi" trending on Twitter as people referenced the line "Could put a M right on your head, you Luigi brother now." J. Cole, also known as The Man Who Went Platinum with No Features back in 2014, was largely praised for the lyric surrounding the album's release.

Background

On May 14th, 2021, at 12:01 a.m., J. Cole released his new hip-hop album, titled The Off-Season. The album was highly anticipated due to the artist himself having a lot of buzz around him from days leading up to the release, and fans quickly acquired it and began posting about it online, mostly on Twitter. The first track on the album, "95-South," contains a reference to the Super Mario character Luigi around the 45-second mark (shown below).

I be stayin' out the way, but if the beef do come around
Could put a M right on your head, you Luigi brother now

The first tweet to reference this was by Twitter^[1] user @TeamDreamville, who posted an hour after the album went live on May 14th. His tweet included four lines of lyrics, a hashtag of the album name and a picture of Mario to help with the reference, getting 6,200 likes in 11 hours (shown below).

When asked in the Twitter^[2] thread about the meaning behind the lyrics, @xFieldsWithThe3 explained by saying the reference is J. Cole threatening to put a million-dollar bounty on the head of someone who is threatening him (shown below).

Online Reaction

On May 14th, 2021, one of the first accounts to tweet reactions about the lyrics was @_IvanArroyo, who tweeted^[2] the lyrics in question, the song title and four reaction images, getting 3,000 likes in 10 hours (shown below).

When J. Cole said, “Could put a M right on your head, you Luigi brother now.” 95 South pic.twitter.com/tTTAjz7ULO

— Iván (@_IvanArroyo) May 14, 2021

While some were posting reactions to the lyrics and indicating that they were fire, there were plenty of dissidents as well. An example is Twitter^[4] user @mair2x who tweeted their dissatisfaction with J. Cole's lyrics that same day, making an exclamation that Kendrick Lamar is desperately needed to come back, earning 36 likes in 11 hours (shown below).

Various Reactions

Search Interest

External References