Crooked Smile - The Beauty Within

I think one of the most powerful things about a song is the way it resonates with your soul and touches your heart — in a way you can’t seem to explain in words, but the feelings are undeniably there. You find yourself replaying the song over and over again, singing along to every single lyric at the top of your lungs, like second nature all because there’s something about the song that simply speaks to you.

And J. Cole’s Crooked Smile?

It does just that.

In a society that profits from the insecurities of its members, it’s so refreshing to hear a hip-hop artist cultivate a song that combats the pressures of conformity, while preaching the importance of self love. Yes. The whole essence of his song begins with Cole’s will to stay true to who he is, even if it means keeping his crooked smile. But if you venture a little deeper and analyze the lyrics, you’ll see that it’s a movement to encourage his fans to not only be content with who they are, but to love themselves despite what “flaws” may be present.

Personally, I have struggled with my own insecurities, many of which are stemmed from societal pressures to be — smart enough, skinny enough, pretty enough. I stretched myself so thin just trying to be enough for others that I lost sight of my own self worth but when I hear Crooked Smile, I am reminded of the beauty, that is me. I have someone through the speakers of my car and the earbuds of my headphones telling me of the beauty that resides within me. That no matter how many times cosmetic companies advertise make up for being the dependent factor for my beauty, celebrities, like the Kardashians, showing the need for plastic surgery as a means to feeling comfortable in my own skin, or the amount of times society tells me I’m not enough, I have to remember that I am more than good enough.

“The song is bigger than just my thing, it’s about everybody’s thing, Society tries to tell you there’s something about you that makes you inferior to the images they’re trying to put out there. [The song] is really me embracing my [imperfections] and trying to get other people to embrace theirs.” — J. Cole

Take J. Cole’s own struggle — Despite the many pressures that came from the fame to fix his grill, J. Cole chose to keep his teeth intact to prove that his crooked smile is by no means a reflection of his self worth and he shares this reality within his song in hopes that it will encourage others to learn how to love themselves in the same way. His song is an empowerment for others to not only come to terms with their imperfections, but to be confident about them and embrace ’em with all its entirety. To learn that you don’t have to have the body of a model, a voice of a singer, or a face of an actor to be happy with yourself. So long as you love yourself. Well, that’s all that matters.

I still have a long way to go and a lot to learn about fully loving myself but this song acts as a constant reminder that under all of these insecurities lies a beautiful soul capable of self love.

That’s the power of music — of one simple song.

It moves you in ways reality is just incapable of doing.

And because of you I’ll know that, like the sun, I’ll always find my way back ‘round.