J. Cole just wanted to get back to the music.
During his conversation with Cam'ron on Talk With Flee, Cole spoke about the thought process that went into his response to Kendrick Lamar on “7 Minute Drill,” admitting his goal was to do “just enough to where it look like I said something.”
When asked about his reaction to Kendrick calling out him and Drake on “Like That,” Cole said the song is “tough” but also “inconvenient” because he wanted to drop the project Might Delete Later, followed by The Fall-Off, which was basically finished.
“Like That” altered those plans.
“My feeling was like, ‘Fuck,’” he recalled. “Because now I know this shit that you’ve been working on for eight years, plus this other shit that you did, as a set-up, n****s ain’t gonna never let you put that out until you address this, until you say something here.”
While in the studio in the Bahamas with producer T-Minus, Cole wrote “7 Minute Drill” during one of his seven-minute writing exercises. In his mind, Cole believed the track would not damage their relationship, while also giving the people what they wanted from him.
“Let me say just enough to where it look like I said something,” he said at the 45:10 mark. “Everything I’m saying to him, I know, and he know. It’s all survivable. It’s nothing.”
“I’m not hitting him,” Cole continued. “I’m not hitting him with no fatal blows, but it’ll be just enough to be like, ‘Alright n***a, you said what you said, now you gonna come back.’ I know, this is my man, he gonna come back. He gonna say something. Give me a line or two, and I’m gonna be like, ‘You got that, cool. Now let’s get to this album, and really fuck ‘em up.’”
Cole said he did not foresee how “7 Minute Drill” would turn his supporters into enemies of Kendrick and vice versa. While Cole thought their back-and-forth would play out in a light-hearted fashion, he started to question how Lamar would interpret the track, or serve as an invitation to take things further.
With so much weighing on him at the time, Cole decided to express his regrets over dropping “7 Minute Drill” onstage at his Dreamville Festival.
