The Sunset Tapes: A Cool Tape Story is Jaden Smith’s third mixtape and his first since November 2014’s CTV2. The project released on November 17, 2018, intentionally sharing the same release date as his debut studio album, SYRE. On October 21, 2018, Jaden took to Twitter to reveal both the project’s official title and release date. He would later reveal its cover photo three days prior to release. After revealing the aforementioned details, Jaden posted tweets captioned “November 17th” daily up until the project’s debut. In an interview with Beats 1, Jaden confirmed that the mixtape is not the third volume in his Cool Tape series, consisting of 2012’s The Cool Cafe: Cool Tape Vol. 1 and 2014’s CTV2, but rather a spinoff, comparing it to that of Star Wars' A Star Wars Story series.