J. Cole‘s stock may have taken a hit when he controversially bowed out of his brief battle with Kendrick Lamar earlier this year, but in the months since, he’s been steadily putting himself back in fans’ good graces — not with new music, but with nostalgia.
Over the last few weeks, the Dreamville rapper has released early fan-favorite mixtapes such as The Warm Up and Friday Night Lights on streaming services, reissued 2014 Forest Hills Drive with a slew of never-before-heard bonus cuts, and announced a one-night-only concert at New York City’s Madison Square Garden to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his aforementioned third album.
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All this has coincided with Inevitable, a 10-part audio series that Cole launched last month through what’s quickly becoming his new online hub. Co-hosted by his longtime manager Ibrahim “Ib” Hamad and frequent collaborator Scott Lazer — the director behind a number of his music videos and documentaries — the series finds Cole opening up about his life and career like never before.
Recorded over an eight-day span in 2022, the show (which is available for a mininum of $10) was inspired by Ib stumbling on a forgotten-about laptop in his garage containing old demos and unreleased songs, which “conjured up all these amazing memories that they’ve shared over the years,” as Lazer explains in the opening episode.
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Amazing memories are aplenty throughout the first season as Cole and co. look back on the very beginning of his career as an aspiring rapper growing up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, all the way up to the release of the chart-topping 2014 Forest Hills Drive in 2014, which solidified him as one of the biggest Hip Hop artists of his generation.
He talks about his highs and lows along the way, his relationships with the likes of Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Roc Nation label boss JAY-Z and even his love life, among a host of other topics. Oh, and there’s the occasional unreleased song (including collaborations with Kendrick and Pharrell) nestled in the almost 17 hours of audio.
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Here are the 10 biggest revelations from season one of Inevitable. (And yes, there’s a season two on the way.)
J. Cole once confronted JAY-Z for suggesting that Drake should give him a “hit”
JAY-Z pressuring J. Cole for a “hit” to support his debut album Cole World: The Sideline Story is well-documented, and this tension came to a head in 2011 when Cole confronted his label boss for publicly suggesting that Drake should give him a helping hand.
“Jay and LeBron used to do this thing called the Two Kings Dinner [around NBA All-Star Weekend],” Ib explains in episode six. “We’re having a conversation — me, Cole, Drake, Future [The Prince, Drake’s co-manager]. So then Jay walks in and he sees all of us together. He goes, ‘Yo!’ and he looks at Drake and he says, ‘Yo, give the boy one.’
“[He] points at Cole like, basically, ‘Give him a hit.’ We’re all like, ‘What?’ I even remember Future’s face being like, ‘That’s embarrassing’ […] I felt embarrassed for Cole, I felt embarrassed for Drake. I remember just looking at Cole and he looks pissed.”
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Later that night, an annoyed (and slightly drunk) Cole confronted JAY-Z for his comment, leading to a candid but much-needed conversation between the young rapper and his idol. “As I get within, like, seven feet of him and he sees me approaching, he looks at me like, ‘Cole! Just one, give me one. Please!’” Cole says.
“I’m like, ‘Yo, lemme ask you a question’ — and I’ve never spoken like this to Jay in my life — ‘when you were working on Reasonable Doubt, did you have somebody telling you that you needed a single?’ He was like, ‘Nah, I didn’t.’
“[I was like], ‘So why you keep doing that me?’ […] I put an extra little in there. I said, ‘You over here trying to tell me I need one, you telling me to go in with [pop production duo] Stargate. It’s easy to put me in with Stargate after they already got ‘Black & Yellow’ by Wiz Khalifa. Where’s the vision?’”
Cole then recalls Jigga’s measured response to his impassioned question: “One of the many things that I respect about Jay, this n-gga heard me say that, thought about it for a second and said, ‘You right. I respect that. You right.’ That shit felt good. And after that, I never heard that again of like, ‘Where’s the single?’”
J. Cole was taking shots at Kanye West on “Looking For Trouble”
J. Cole credits Kanye West in episode one with changing his life by giving him the confidence to be himself and rap about “regular” stuff, but his first encounter with his “favorite artist” was not quite what he hoped. In a later episode, Cole recalls watching Ye’s pre-My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasty UStream in 2010 and hearing him give a “dismissive” answer when asked if he had any plans to work with Cole, who at the time was on the come up.
“He said, ‘I mean, we might put him on one of the G.O.O.D. Fridays or something.’ It was like a, ‘Yes, but.’ He’s not a n-gga that I would [feature on my album],” Cole remembers with a twinge in his heart. As fate would have it, Kanye phoned him soon after and asked him to jump on a song for his G.O.O.D Fridays series. Cole, who was on tour at the time, initially declined due to time contstraints, but ultimately said yes and drove two hours to a nearby studio to record his verse.
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As it turns out, that chest-beating verse was aimed at Yeezy. “The world has never known that. Those were direct shots [at Kanye] because days prior I had seen the n-gga be like, ‘Ah, we might put him on a G.O.O.D. Friday song or something,’” Cole reveals. “Those are shots I know only [Kanye] would feel.”
Ye didn’t seem to detect the disses, however, as he told J. Cole he “killed it” and even recorded his own verse for the song so they could “have that moment.” The final version still irked Cole, though, who felt that his verse was “sabotaged” due to it being nudged offbeat during the mixing process. Things haven’t become any less complicated between the pair since.
J. Cole had a “divine” encounter with Nas where he played him “Let Nas Down”
As the story goes, J. Cole made “Let Nas Down” after finding out that Nas, one of his Hip Hop heroes, hated his 2011 single “Work Out.” Just days after recording “Let Nas Down,” Cole was playing it for Ib at an airport in Houston when they looked up and saw none other than Nas about to board the same flight. “Right in that moment, I was like, This is some divine shit […] This is a sign from God,” he says in episode eight.
Making the encounter even eerier is the fact that Nas’ seat was in the row behind J. Cole’s. Needless to say, the Roc Nation rookie seized the opportunity and asked Nas if he could play him “Let Nas Down,” to which the Queensbridge MC politely obliged.
“I have no idea what he said [laughs] and now, looking back, I have no idea how he felt or how I expected him to feel,” he admits. “I’m sure he was on some shit like, ‘Yo, that’s dope.’ I don’t remember us having a conversation about the song. But it’s just nuts that I even played it for him, that raw after it was done.”
“St. Tropez” was almost a Kendrick Lamar song
“Another song I did at Jungle [City Studios in New York City] was ‘St. Tropez.’ That was a beat I had sent to Kendrick that he liked. I sent it to him and was like, ‘Yo, I’ma use that one,'” Cole explains in episode 10 while detailing the making of 2014 Forest Hills Drive.
“But one day in a hotel I started writing to ‘St. Tropez,’ to that same beat, and I was like, ‘Oh shit, I kinda want this shit back’ [laughs]. I actually recorded on it, too. So I had to text him and be like, ‘Yo bro, you got something on that beat? ‘Cause I really want to use that.'”
Fortunately for Cole, Kendrick was receptive: “He was like, ‘I got something on there but it’s cool, it’s all good.’ He was like, ‘You owe me one’ type shit [laughs].” Though fans have yet to hear Kendrick’s version of “St. Tropez,” he did release a remix of “A Tale of 2 Citiez” as part of a surprise Black Friday drop in 2015, which also saw Cole jump on K. Dot’s “Alright.”
“Villematic” was the song that finally won JAY-Z’s approval
J. Cole’s early stint on Roc Nation wasn’t as smooth as he hoped as Cole’s initial resistance to give the label the “hit” they were looking for irked Hov, further complicating his ability to build a strong rapport with the Marcy Projects mogul. Things changed in late 2010, though, when Cole dropped “Villematic,” an emphatic freestyle over Kanye West’s “Devil in a New Dress” that wound up on his Friday Night Lights mixtape.
“The reaction that I got from Jay on this song — he didn’t hit me or nothing, but we were at that Yankee Stadium show [with Eminem],” he says in episode six. “You have to understand at this time, yeah, I was signed to Jay but it wasn’t like Jay is my man. Nah, seeing Jay was a rare occasion.”
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“Around that time there was the joke, There’s no picture of Cole and Jay. Jay don’t fuck with Cole,” Ib interjects. “Which is funny, but the reality was you made it a point to be like, ‘I’m not gonna bother this n-gga.’”
Cole then recalls being backstage at the concert and bumping into Hov: “I see Jay coming out of the artist lounge where friends and family be at and he was like, ‘Cole! Yo, n-gga!’ I’ll never forget it ’cause he said it like this: ‘That ‘Villematic’?!’ He called it ‘Vill-er-matic’ [laughs]. He said, ‘Woo! That’s my favorite joint I ever heard from you.’ That was a moment for me.”
J. Cole and his now-wife briefly separated after he became famous
J.Cole and Wife Melissa Heholt Before He Became a Successful Hip Hop Star. Love Conquered Fame.
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Inevitable also finds J. Cole opening up about his otherwise private relationship with college sweetheart Melissa Heholt, who he quietly married in 2015 and with whom he shares two sons. In episode seven, he admits that his initial success — and the subsequent surge in female attention — put a strain on their relationship, leading to them briefly separating around 2012 or 2013.
Cole says there was a part of him that was lured by the ego-inflating appeal of suddenly being able to hook up with “the R&B singers that we grew up on” and “the baddest joint in the club,” which he amusingly describes as feeling like “a bad bitch.” However, he never allowed himself to “go all the way” due to the other part of him wanting to be a faithful family man.
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“In my relationship, all the things that I’m telling you I was feeling, they weren’t said out loud. But just subconsciously, a woman knows, a woman can pick up on energies,” Cole explains. “The more you start thinking about somewhere else, the less you start appreciating what you have — and the worse that situation becomes.
“This was a dark period of a n-gga not watering his grass. I’m not gonna say there was an official separation, but she got her own spot and I got my own spot.” Looking back, Cole admits he was “selfish” and scared to lose his partner, but advises those in a similar predicament to “just have the conversation and be honest.”
This internal conflict also inspired Cole’s 2013 album Born Sinner, in particular songs like “She Knows.”
J. Cole was rejected by Eminem’s manager before signing to JAY-Z
J. Cole has spoken before about how 50 Cent had the chance to sign him before JAY-Z, but it turns out another rap legend (or at least his closest confidante) turned down the oppurtunity as well. In episode two, Cole and Ib reveal that they met with Eminem’s longtime manager Paul Rosenberg before joining Roc Nation, but the Shady Records co-founder was completely uninterested.
“Paul Rosenberg genuinely felt like he was disinterested and didn’t give a fuck,” Cole says. “It felt like it was a favor [to somebody]. There was no vibe to that meeting. He didn’t see it, he didn’t get it. Which is cool, he didn’t play us at all, but you could feel the vibe [wasn’t there].”
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Ib adds: “Even the way we came into the meeting, it was almost like, ‘Alright, I got a meeting I knockout real quick. Let’s just do this.’”
Rosenberg’s lack of interest didn’t knock Cole’s confidence, though, as he was merely grateful to have met with such a prominent figure in the industry: “The fact that I was right there with Eminem’s fucking manager and had somehow made it onto his radar was just more proof of like, ‘Yo, just keep doing what you’re doing.’”
Months later, Cole would end up becoming the first artist signed to JAY-Z’s newly-launched Roc Nation imprint.
J. Cole felt like Kendrick Lamar “surpassed” him following the release of good kid, m.A.A.d city
J. Cole may have broken through into the mainstream before Kendrick Lamar (who he, of course, quickly developed a friendship and working relationship with), but the Compton native soon sped past him with the release of his widely acclaimed 2012 debut good kid, m.A.A.d city — according to Cole himself.
Recalling his initial reaction to the album, Cole says: “As soon as I heard it, I was like, ‘This n-gga did exactly what I wanted to do a year ago [with Cole World: The Sideline Story]’ […] It was so pure. He hit it out the park. It walked the line perfectly between classic content and commercial appeal. Sonically, that shit was fucking phenomenal. From a writing perspective, from the hooks, the melodies […] It was a wave when good kid, m.A.A.d city dropped.”
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Cole goes on to recall the moment he felt that Kendrick had “surpassed” him: “We had a show and we were both on the same lineup. Mind you, if this was six months prior, I’d be going last. But on this show, I went before him [and he closed the show].
“Because he just had joints that were going off — ‘if Pirus and Crips, all got along.’ […] He had a few songs off that album, like ‘m.A.A.d city’ and ‘Backseat Freestyle,’ that weren’t actually singles but if you pressed play on them, they going off like singles. And that’s always an indicator of when some shit connects.
“On top of that, he had ‘Swimming Pools’ which was already killing at radio and he was on [A$AP Rocky‘s ‘Fuckin’ Problems’]. So there was no part of me that was like, ‘What the fuck they got this n-gga going after me for?’ It was moreso a quiet understanding of, You’ve been passed.”
“Can I Holla At Ya” still tugs at J. Cole’s heartstrings
By far the most emotional moment of season one comes during episode seven when J. Cole breaks down while listening to “Can I Holla At Ya,” a song he released in 2013 that touches on Cole’s stepfather leaving his family and the devastating impact that it had on his mother.
After hearing the verse in question, Cole audibly chokes up and admits: “That shit just hit me crazy.” He then spends the next several minutes trying to hold back his tears while talking about the making of the track and his complicated relationship with his stepdad, Edward.
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“The line that fucked me up just now was, ‘When you left, I watched that lady crumble.’ It’s like, ‘Oh shit. Damn,’” he says, choking up all over again. “In that moment, I must have wanted that n-gga to feel that shit […] That’s why it’s hitting me ’cause I can hear the hurt.”
Cole later reveals that he and his stepfather have since repaired their relationship and that he has come to terms with Edward’s decision to leave: “Now, at 37, I’m like, Man, I understand everybody’s perspective […] A lot of relationships are built on toxic traits from childhood trauma that we don’t know how to deal with. So I understand now that he was just making decisions that were best for him at the time, doing the best that he could, and she was doing the best she could.”
J. Cole listened to The Beatles, André 3000 and Bob Marley religiously while making 2014 Forest Hills Drive
J. Cole may have sampled the likes of Erykah Badu, Project Pat and Esther Phillips on 2014 Forest Hills Drive, but there were three unlikely acts who remained on repeat while he crafted the album. Cole explains in episode nine that while recording the project in Los Angeles, his daily routine included bumping The Beatles’ Abbey Road and André 3000‘s The Love Below during workouts in Runyon Canyon Park.
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This time period, which he calls one of the “greatest” of his life, coincided with Cole discovering meditation and adopting a more true-to-self style that saw him grow out his hair and rock “comfortable” clothes.
In the following episode, Cole adds that he listened to a lot of Bob Marley while finishing 2014 Forest Hills Drive in New York City, which he would often explore on bike. “It was my New York equivalent to Runyon Canyon,” he says. “It was so much Bob [Marley]. I was on a Bob wave crazy riding through New York.”
