Middle Child

On January 20, 2019, J. Cole cleared his Instagram page, the next day Cole cryptically posted a series of posts with lines from the song. They read: I'm Counting My Bullets, I'm Loading My Clips, I'm Writing Down Names, and I'm Making A List, J Cole later deleted the posts.[5] Then, later that same day, Cole announced on social media that he was releasing "Middle Child" on January 23, 2019, at 9:00 PM EST, and uploaded the cover art which featured the song's title capitalized over a static grey background.[6]

On January 25, 2019, in an interview with Complex, producer T-Minus revealed that they made the song about two months before the highly promoted Dreamville recording sessions, which were held the same month "Middle Child" was released. He also spoke about the process he and Cole took making the song:

No. Well, the way we work is we kind of just start from scratch, and we just brainstorm from there. Him and his manager had an idea to pull a sample out, so we went online and we found this really cool loop. The moment we heard it, we all reacted to it. Cole fell in love with it, and I could tell he had the vision for what he wanted. So he heard the sample and we were like, "Yo, we gotta do something on this." So we started filling the track out. It all happened in one day. We filled this beat out, he started writing to it, he recorded it—it was pretty much done within that day. The whole record. It was just a moment and it was actually one of the last days of sessions that we did. We did like a five day run of just working, and it was the last day, so it came right in the nick of time.[7]

"Middle Child" was produced by both J. Cole and Canadian hip-hop producer T-Minus. The song includes an exclusive multi-track sample of the horns section from "Wake Up to Me" by '70s Philadelphia trio First Choice, which was found and cleared through music licensing site Tracklib.[8][9] This allowed them to isolate horns before adding in the drums. In an episode of Genius' Deconstructed, T-Minus explained he "put some reverb on [the horn sample] to give it that effect of it being a little bit more airy, a little bit bigger".[9] Next was the addition of drums to the song, which T-Minus said was reminiscent of KOD "'cause a lot of it's very like stuttery kind of hats, very short but rhythmic". The drums added a variety of sounds, but J. Cole wanted to add an 808 pattern to the song, with the beat going from high to low.[9] T-Minus noted the 808 for being "really hard" and also incorporated hi-hats to add "more energy to the song when it drops".[9] The last production detail was including T-Minus' signature "trippy vibe", which he previously utilized on song like Kendrick Lamar's "Swimming Pools (Drank)" and Lil Wayne's "She Will"—"at the end of the record, we kind of added this effect to make everything kind of sound dark and kind of trippy".[9]

With only one day of tracking, the song debuted at number 26 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The following week, the song peaked at number 4, later becoming J. Cole's best performing track and highest-charting song until the release of My Life with 21 Savage & Morray, which peaked at number two.[10][11] The song also peaked at number 2 on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.

An accompanying music video for the track was uploaded to Cole's official YouTube channel on February 25, 2019.[12] Cole announced the video via Twitter on February 22, 2019.[13] The video was shot in Georgia, and was directed by fellow North Carolina rapper Mez, and features cameos from Dreamville artists Lute, Omen, and Cozz.[12] The video serves as Mez' first directed video.[14]

In an interview with Complex, Mez spoke about the creation of the video, he said:

I came up with everything from scratch, but [J. Cole's go-to director] Scott [Lazer] had an idea for the Bentley. He was like, "Man, we should get the Bentley dirty, we should ride it through the mud," you know what I mean? And we ended up having a conversation about how to expand on that idea. It's funny because we're all from North Carolina, so mudding cars is something we all know and understand. But when they said that, I then came up with the whole concept for the video. I was like, "Oh, I know what I want it to be." The whole video is a concept. It's like a flip of Middle America: the NASCAR shit, the mudding shit, the hunting shit, everything. Almost every single shot—even in the grocery store setting, with the white woman purchasing the black girl's features, you know what I'm saying?[15]

Reviewing the music video, Laura Dzubay of The Michigan Daily said, "The visuals used in the "MIDDLE CHILD" video are very evocative: Between the lit-up marching band, the covered dead bodies, the stuffed rappers' heads on the mantle and the woman at the end picking a Saran-wrapped head out of a sale freezer at the grocery store, it's almost hard to land on which theme (if any) might be the most significant. What does seem clear is that J. Cole is asserting his readiness to dominate the music scene no matter which direction it takes next."[16] Writing for The Fader, Jordan Darville described the video as "a fun, symbolic, and provocative set of visuals."[17]

J. Cole performed "Middle Child" at the 2019 NBA All-Star Game halftime show on February 17, 2019, in Charlotte, North Carolina.[18]

Many remixes have been made, including by rappers Deante' Hitchcock, released on January 28, 2019,[19] Reason, released on March 8, 2019,[20] and Montana of 300, released on March 24, 2019.[21]

• Audio on YouTube