J. Cole took plenty of backlash for walking back his Kendrick Lamar diss track “7 Minute Drill,” and he pulled up to Cam’ron’s Talk With Flee on Wednesday (March 25) to provide proper context around the song’s creative process and explain what he hoped to achieve with it.
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Following Kendrick’s explosive verse on “Like That,” Cole felt the pressure to respond. However, he wanted to land a few jabs and not do any permanent damage to his relationship with Lamar, while still feeding rap fans’ appetites for war.
“Let me say just enough to where it looks like I said something. Everything I’m saying to him, I know and he knows it’s all survivable. It’s nothing,” he said. “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 f—k them up.’”
When “7 Minute Drill” ultimately arrived in April 2024, Cole underestimated the attention the diss track would receive and the tensions it would raise with Kendrick. He felt he “misrepresented” himself and was “fraudulent” about how he went about responding, caving to fan pressure.
“The second it comes out, I’m seeing right away what I did. Instantly, what I did was divided off rip. You created a divided line,” he explained. “You forcing the world to pick a side. If they f—k with you, they gotta slander him. They taking what you said and they giving it gas. Then my thoughts, ‘I done f—ked up. I misrepresented myself.’ My intention was some bulls—t.”
Cole then made the analogy comparing the intended damage of his Kendrick diss to shooting someone in the toe.
The North Carolina rap legend was immediately filled with regret, which led to him scrubbing “7 Minute Drill” from streaming services days later and apologizing to Lamar on stage at Dreamville Fest. This all cleared the way for Drake to step in and battle Kendrick later in April 2024.
Elsewhere in Cam and Cole’s chat, Cole revealed that Lamar originally had a pair of features on an earlier version of The Fall-Off, which he pivoted from following the aforementioned events.
Watch the full interview below. Talk about Kendrick and “7 Minute Drill” takes place around the 46-minute mark.
