In an unforeseen turn of events, J. Cole has had a change of heart about his recent Kendrick Lamar diss track.
Videos posted to social media that showed Cole, 39, addressing the crown during his set at Raleigh’s Dreamville Festival on Sunday, April 7. Cole released his latest album, Might Delete Later, two days prior, which concludes with the song “7 Minute Drill.” The track includes lyrics taking shots at Lamar, 36, such as, “He averagin’ one hard verse like every 30 months or somethin’” and “He still doin’ shows, but fell off like The Simpsons.”
“I’m so proud of [Might Delete Later], except for one part,” Cole told the crowd on Sunday. “It’s one part of that s—t that makes me feel like, man that’s the lamest s—t I did in my f—king life, right?”
He continued, “I damn near had a relapse … I ain’t gonna lie to y’all. The past two days have felt terrible. It let me know how good I’ve been sleeping for the past 10 years.” The musician went on to apologize for his “misstep,” and asked for forgiveness to “get back to [his] true path.”
“I want to say right now tonight, how many people think Kendrick Lamar is one of the greatest motherf–kers to ever touch a f–king microphone?” he said on stage, which was met with cheers from the audience.
Cole and Lamar have had a long-standing rivalry, but it escalated in October 2023 after the “No Role Modelz” musician and Drake dropped the song “First Person Shooter,” where they referred to themselves, plus Lamar, as the “big three” of rap.
(Cole, Drake, 37, and Lamar have a plethora of Grammy Awards between the three of them. Lamar was the first non-classical or jazz musician to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2018.)
Lamar fired back with his verse on Future and Metro Boomin’s song “Like That,” where he asserted that there was no “big three,” rapping, “It’s just big me.” (The song appeared on Metro Boomin and Future’s collaborative album We Don’t Trust You which dropped on March 22.)
Drake, for his part, might not feel the same way as Cole. During a March 31 show on his It’s All A Blur – Big as the What? Tour, fan footage taken at the concert showed Drake perform a rendition of “Meltdown,” his collab with Travis Scott off the latter’s 2023 album Utopia. During the concert, Drake pretended to shoot a giant inflatable head of Scott’s likeness.
Theories suggest that the beef originated when Scott appeared during Metro Boomin and Future’s set at Rolling Loud California in March, where he seemingly urged the duo to preview “Like That.” However, the live version did not include Lamar’s Drake diss.
