A very comfortable J. Cole sat down with hip-hop radio show Combat Jack to discuss a wide variety of topics including his critically acclaimed album 2014 Forest Hills Drive, how Cole wanted to sign Kendrick Lamar and his track "Fire Squad" that had everyone up in arms. The 2-hour interview takes a deep dive into Cole's past and the issues that have surrounded the North Carolina rapper recently.
Speaking to his interviewers, J. Cole talked about his music and being very comfortable about where he is as an artist. He had done so much promotion for his first album Cole World, that he had become sick of seeing his own interviews and had resigned himself to knowing that 2014 Forest Hills Drive could have flopped simply because it might have just gotten lost in the shuffle. Luckily it didn't and it went gold in its second week.
Cole gets personal talking about the house he grew up in and the plans he has for it. He revealed that he would like to have it be a space where single moms can be housed, rent-free, for a few years with their kids.
"My goal is to have that be a haven for families. So every two years a new family will come in, they live rent-free. The idea is that it's a single mother with multiple kids and she's coming from a place where all her kids is sharing a room. She might have two, three kids, they're sharing a room. She gets to come here rent free. I want her kids to feel how I felt when we got to the house."
The Combat Jack hosts broach the subject of his controversial last verse on "Fire Squad," which has been all of the promotion that Cole needed for the LP. He tries to clear things up, explaining, "I'd never go at Eminem," he confesses. "It's not even Iggy Azalea's fault, she's chasing her dream. It doesn't matter the quality of her music, but I have to comment, it's my job to tell you what's on my mind in the slickest way ever...When history is told Macklemore is in them books, Iggy Azalea's in them books."
Cole also recounts the time when he first met Kendrick Lamar in 2010 and looked to sign him almost immediately because he knew Lamar had something special.
"I met Kendrick at a time when all I had out was The Warm Up, nobody knew who he was, he didn't have a deal. He was signed to Top [Dawg]-I didn't know he was signed to Top," Cole continued. "I actually wanted to sign him, but I didn't have my business right. I didn't know he was with Top [Dawg]," explained Cole. "But in my mind, he was the first person I ever found. ... I remember tellin' everybody like, 'Yo, I'm tryna sign this kid. Like yo, this ni**a's nasty!'"
Cole got the co-sign from Dr. Dre who was looking into Kendrick at the time.
When I was in the studio with Dre I had to tell Dre like, 'Yo, you ain't never heard of Kendrick?' And he was like, 'Oh, Kendrick? Yeah, I'm supposed to be meeting with him soon.' And I was giving him the crazy co-sign like, 'You gotta fuck with Kendrick.'"
We know what happened next. "This ni**a blew the f**k up and reached levels that I hadn't reached. ... I didn't know the ni**a would go platinum before me, but I definitely saw it for him. I believed and believe."
Listen to the full interview with Combat Jack below.
