J. Cole is finally breaking his silence on why he decided to bow out of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake lyrical scuffle that took over most of 2024 and 2025.
During a sit-down with Apple Music, inside of his childhood home, the Fayetteville-born rapper talked about his early exit from the rap beef between two of his most successful contemporaries. When Kendrick’s initial shots in the beef rang out during his guest verse on Future’s “Like That” record, he seemed to be taking aim at both Drake and J. Cole with the line, “motherf**kthe big 3/n****, it’s just big me.”
Though his initial reaction was a response titled “7 Minute Drill” on the Might Delete Later mixtape, he later removed the track and apologized to Kendrick during his annual Dreamville Festival. He has been mum on the feud between the two rappers since that moment until now.
“It hit me an hour before [hitting the stage],” Cole said of his public apology. “Before that, I was stressing the f**k out. Then the moment for the idea came to me like a guide, and I lifted, and I got light, and I got excited. I got so excited because to tell you, three or four days before that it was like, ‘Oh my, nah, this is terrible.’ Because I felt like I misrepresented myself. You know what I mean?”
He continued,
“I felt miserable about it. So I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I gotta go on this stage and come out here and pretend almost. Like, people think that I’m representing that.’ Might Delete Later had just dropped…the drama of all of this is the biggest news happening, and I’m coming out as a representative of what the f**k they just heard. So an hour before it was like, ‘Oh, aha. Like, yo, in a very loud manner, you know, on a very public forum on your album, you said some s**t you didn’t believe in. Now you got the opportunity to go on a bigger forum, you know what I mean? A bigger stage is being livestreamed and say something that you believe in.’ And in that moment, I’m like, ‘Oh, thank you, God.’”
On top of not wanting to give “life to division and negative storylines” about Kendrick, Cole says it had also been weighing on him because of the love and respect he has for the Compton rapper. Their bond was so tight that even Cole’s wife had an emotional reaction his decision to apologize publicly.
“She start crying because she know how I feel about him. You know what I mean? Like she knows, and she saw how it was weighing on me the two, three days before that,” he said. “She could see in my whole energy. And she would even ask me, and I’m just like, ‘Yeah, I got a lot going on right now.’”
Cole seems to be holding on to his neutral stance as he expressed his love and respect for both Drake and Kendrick during the interview.
“First of all, those is dudes that — I admire these dudes,” he explained. “I got genuine love for these dudes. Like, I hate to see the world s**t on either one of them in defense of the other…That s**t is, even saying it out loud is a little silly.”
Rap fans were evenly split on either applauding the maturity of Cole’s decision or wishing he’d extended a friendly fade in the name of hip hop; however, the Fall Off” rapper seems to have stayed true to what mattered to him. And you gotta respect that!
Watch the full J. Cole interview below.
