Before the stage name and YouTube links, before the streams and the studio nights, there was Cornelius Green in Pine Bluff, Arkansas—trying to turn heavy days into something that felt like hope. He’ll tell you straight: it was hard for real. Setbacks, let downs, feeling like a failure. Showing love and getting hate back. That kind of loop can make a person cold. Instead, CJ made a promise—first to himself, then to his daughter—that he would keep going.
For anyone new to his world, the proof points are starting to stack. His project Nyani ran up 2,000 streams in two days. Numbers don’t define an artist, but they do signal something: there are people listening, replaying, telling friends. CJ doesn’t take that lightly. He talks to his supporters with the same tone you’d use for family. He tells them he loves them, and it sounds less like a slogan and more like a man who remembers when he felt alone.
There’s a new chapter opening, and it’s loud. Welcome To CrimeBluff, the album, drops October 3. The title is more than a clever flip; it’s a map back to Pine Bluff, to the corners and stories that shaped him, to the people who helped and the ones who hurt, to the choices that still follow him around. Expect records that carry the weight he’s earned, the kind that make a listener stare at the ceiling at midnight and think about their own life. Expect texture: pain and hope, anger and prayer, hunger and relief. Expect a voice that belongs to the South but wants the whole country to hear it.
If there’s a message at the core of CJ’s music, it’s simple: be yourself, no matter what anybody says. That’s the kind of advice that sounds basic until you try it. Being yourself in public—online, on wax, on stage—takes guts. It also takes faith that your story, unpolished and unfiltered, is enough. CJ believes it is. He believes it will take you a long way. He believes it can turn hate into fuel, missteps into lessons, and fear into momentum.
A day in his life isn’t complicated. He wakes up, smokes, showers, records, eats, then smokes and records again. It sounds funny until you realize repetition is how you build a craft, a catalog, a life that doesn’t wobble when the wind hits. The routine is the point. It’s guardrails against old habits and new distractions. It’s how he stays ready for the moment he’s been chasing since Pine Bluff.
Before he signs off, CJ always circles back to the people who might need to hear it most. If nobody told you today, he’s proud of you. Keep going. Don’t stall on what you love. Just do it, like the brand says. Love and respect—two words that get thrown around easy, but you can feel he means them.
Nlmb CJ came out of a place that tested him and refused to let that be the last word. He turned pain into purpose, pride into discipline, and a promise to his daughter into a catalog you can press play on. October 3 is another step, not a finish line. The door is open. The volume is up. Welcome to CrimeBluff.
Check out his Youtube here: https://youtube.com/@nlmbcj2844?si=CIpGFYfBhr9tbzWk
