J. Cole har under senaste veckorna varit ute på “K.O.D Tour” aktuell med sitt senaste album från i våras. Trots Coles stjärnstatus gör han sällan intervjuer och väljer sina tillfällen att yttra sig med nogrannhet. Vid ett turnéstopp i Dallas, Texas fick Billboard möjligheten att tala närmare med Dreamville-artisten som firar stora framgångar i USA och internationellt.
I intervjun öppnar Cole upp om kändisskapet, politik, sociala medier och hur han ser på den yngre generationens rappare av idag. Cole berättar även om ett samtal med XXXtentacion innan hans död.
Se utdrag från Billboard-intervjun nedan:
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What keeps you from sharing your opinions on Twitter?
If I’m in a conversation with somebody and it’s natural and it’s organic, I’m going to speak freely. But rarely do I feel the need to hop on Twitter or social media and chime in, especially on rap and music shit. This shit is not real. This shit is fucking fake. This shit is high school. This shit is fucking celebrity worship. In college, we had this running joke that all our meetings of the Black Student Union — that I ended up becoming president of, but I was just a member my freshman and sophomore years — always eventually ended up talking about Jay-Z. No matter what black topic, social issue or community shit we was talking about, somebody brought up fucking Jay-Z. It never failed.
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Your criticisms were fair, but some people saw “1985” as finger wagging. Do you think the song came down too hard on the SoundCloud generation?
I don’t look at it as being harsh. I look at it as being a rap response record. It’s not even to someone [specific]; it’s a group of people who were on some “Fuck J. Cole” shit, which, when I started peeking my head back into what was going on, was a shock. But even while I made the song, I was fucking with these kids. I was a fan. I was riding around playing Lil Pump just because I wanted to understand what it was, and the more I understood, it was like, “Damn.” I was writing that song from a place of, like, smacking your little brother. I still love you, but I’ma smack you.
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When XXXTentacion died, you tweeted that he had “a strong desire to be a better person.” Did you know him?
I spoke to him on FaceTime one day in February for, like, three hours. His management reached out to Ib and asked if he could FaceTime me or call me. It was a super-intense conversation. He left a mark on me, just as a person.
What did he want to talk about?
Pssht. He started off the conversation literally on some, like — he didn’t even say hello. He started off basically saying, “I’m not on your level yet.” He was talking about spiritually and mentally, and that was intense because I was like, “Huh? I’m not on no level.” He was praising me while also saying he was going to achieve whatever it is he felt that I had. I’ve dealt with mentally ill people in my life before, many of them. And right away, I notice that this kid is super passionate and smart, but I could also see that he was so deep in his mind.
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