2013Released
4:38

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Crooked Smile (feat. TLC). By Songfacts®.

This piano-driven banger was released as the second official single from J. Cole's Born Sinner album. The ode to self-love, which was produced by J. Cole himself, finds him counselling women to embrace their inner beauty and what God has already created with his paint brush. "It's a very empowering song," he said of the track at a London playback of the record. "I don't have that Colgate smile and people keep reminding me about it. People are always looking to criticize you and I started to feel self-conscious about it - it takes you back to high school."

The song features Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas from the American girl group TLC singing on the track's hook. Originally a trio, along with the late Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, the R&B threesome recorded a string of hits in the 1990s, including the Hot 100 #1s "Creep," "Waterfalls," "No Scrubs" and "Unpretty." According to Cole, TLC were one of his favorite groups when he was growing up.

Though Cole really does have a crooked smile, he told Hartford, Connecticut radio station Hot 93.7 that the tune's message is bigger than his own imperfections. "The song is bigger than just my thing, it's about everybody's thing," he said. "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."

Top Listeners

Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Crooked Smile (feat. TLC).
GKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
81BPM

Album

The album Crooked Smile (feat. TLC) is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Crooked Smile (feat. TLC).
Roc Nation LLC
© 2013 Cole World/Interscope Records
℗ 2013 Cole World/Interscope Records

See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.

Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.

5.9MArtists
74.8MSongs
12.5MAlbums
6.4KGenres
2.5MLabels
494KPlaylists