On his new podcast Inevitable, J. Cole has been dropping insider information about his career and overall rap game left and right. He showed love to Ye and spoke about how he inspired him (even though the Chicago rapper has thrown recent shade at him).
He has played unreleased music with the people’s champ, K. Dot. Now, he is getting back into his storytime bag and discussing an interesting proposition Drizzy received from Jay-Z in 2011.
Cole wasn’t feeling Jay-Z
Everything went down while the Dreamville rapper and his manager, Ibrahim “Ib” Hamad, were at Lebron James’ Two Kings Dinner at the 2011 NBA All-Star Weekend. While Cole was a known name in the mixtape world, he still hadn’t had that one song that put him on the mainstream map from Jay-Z’s POV. As everyone was talking with one another, J. Cole said that HOVA asked Drake to give him a smash hit.
“We having a conversation. Me, Cole, Drake, Future [The Prince]. I don’t know who else, but there were a couple more people,” Ib said. “So then Jay walks in, and he sees all of us together. He goes, ‘Yo.’ And he looks at Drake and he says, ‘Give the boy one!’ Points at Cole, like, basically give him a hit. We’re all like, ‘What?’ I even remember Future’s face being like, ‘That’s embarrassing,” Cole said.
He continued by stating how he was pissed about the situation, with HOVA “looking at Drake and pointing at me and going, ‘Give him a hit — give my boy a hit.’”
Even Hamad remembers “being at the dinner after that, and I’m just looking at Cole, and he looks pissed,” he said.
Months before Jay-Z killed the vibe, J. Cole and Drake already collaborated on the 2011 track “In the Morning” (which peaked at #57 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart) for his Friday Night Lights project.
Since then, they released “First Person Shooter” in 2023 which ended up being J. Cole’s first No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Jay-Z’s comment was prophetic 12 years later, but that doesn’t make what he said any less awkward.
