J. Cole doesn’t think people want to hear what he has to say about rap beef after Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s historic spat that he was caught in the middle of — controversially bowing out with an apology.
Around the one-hour point of his interview on 7PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony, Cole said that he doesn’t know how Kendrick or Drake feel about him right now. He said that he would “love” to see K Dot and Drake come together and settle their differences in the future, but he doesn’t see it happening anytime soon. But when asked if he feels that rap beef is net-positive or net-negative for hip-hop, he said that he’s “unqualified” to talk about it.
“I feel unqualified to even…If I had my shoes on the other feet of somebody else, I don’t want to hear my opinion on whether I think beef is good or bad for hip-hop. It’s like, bro, it don’t matter. Honestly, who gives a fuck? Who gives a fuck about my opinion? That’s how I feel. I would feel crazy to even sit up here and go, ‘Yeah, I think it’s great for the culture.’ ‘N***a, you apologized.’ I would feel crazy to sit up here and go, 'Nah, I think it’s a net-negative for the culture.' ‘N***a, you apologized.’ I’m not interested in giving that to the world and I doubt they interested in hearing it.”
He also addressed his decision to bow out of the beef following the release of the Might Delete Later track, “7 Minute Drill.” On the song, Cole dissed Kendrick. Shortly after release, he removed it from music streaming services and apologized for the lyrics, describing the decision to release it as a “misstep.”
“I can only speak on what I felt at the time, and it wasn’t foresight in the sense of, like, I knew anything that was happening,” he said. “I just knew how I felt. It wasn’t foresight. It was hindsight, if anything. It was like, ‘Oh God, I can just feel how I feel.’ You know what I mean? On my heart and on my spirit. There was no magic ball… I had no clue how that shit was going to go. I actually feel like how I probably thought it would go was a little more regular than how it went. It outdid anything I could have imagined. In terms of how tense that shit got, and entertaining it got to the world.”
As for why he ultimately chose to bow out, Cole said he felt compelled to apologize because he was “genuinely wrong.”
“I misrepresented myself and how I feel about this person [Kendrick] to the world.” he said. “I was afraid that if I didn’t come out and do something at least... then this thing that I’ve been working on for eight years... this album... will come out and they not going to let me put it out. They going to say, 'Nope, we don’t want to hear it.'... My fear of fucking up the public reception of this thing that I’ve been working so hard on... ultimately fear won.”
