Under flera års tid fanns intensiva rykten om att J. Cole och Kendrick Lamar skulle släppa ett gemensamt albumprojekt. Nu bekräftar Cole att det finns substans i uppgifterna men att det tilltänkta projektet runnit ut i sanden för länge sedan. I en intervju med podcasten “A Safe Place” berättar Dreamville-bossen om upprinnelsen till ett potentiellt samarbete:
“In a nutshell, he had pulled up on me at No ID’s spot, after we was already building this relationship, and I had these beats at the time and I was playing them for him. Was that our first time linking? ‘HiiiPoWeR,’ one of them beats? There’s a few beats, a gang of beats that I did, I gave him. Some of them like, maybe had a hook on them, a verse — this, that, and the third. So he took them and, you know, in that moment, we talked about, ‘Yo, bro, we should do a project.’ At that time he’s not on like that, but I’m f*ckin’ with him.”
J. Cole säger vidare:
“At one point, it was a real thing. But bro, time and life… We ain’t ever got the chance to go in and do it correctly, because that would take time. For us to do something that’s full of our potential, that meets our real potential, you’re gonna need time. At least a year. When you got two successful artists with lives and families, that’s hard to do… We put it to bed years ago. But at one point in time, it was a real conversation, for sure.”
Han bekräftar slutligen att det fanns skisser för låtar och produktioner som aldrig blev färdiginspelade:
“It’s not, like, it’s a ton of songs. It’s not like it’s some album sitting on the shelf somewhere.”
I intervjun pratar Cole även om hans uppskattade gästinhopp på olika artisters projekt – som han inte tar betalt för alls enligt egen utsago
“Like, a lot of my bars be really on point but that’s just a flex. I’m not gonna charge a n***a $2,000 a word. I don’t even charge n***a for the verse, I’m doing this shit because I’m inspired to do it.”
“I’m not charging n***as because, you know, I want to be on the song. I wouldn’t do that.”
J. Cole arbetar i dagsläget på att färdigställa sitt nya album “The Fall Off” som i dagsläget inte har något bekräftat releasedatum.
