Over the weekend, J. Cole fulfilled the prophecy in the title of his surprise-released mixtape Might Delete Later and announced his intention to pull “7 Minute Drill,” a (three-and-a-half-minute) reply to the swat on the wrist he got from Kendrick Lamar on “Like That.” During a headlining set at Dreamville Fest, Cole admitted in public what you might’ve surmised from the almost reverent tone he had toward Kendrick on “Drill”: “I tried to jab my nigga back, and I tried to keep it friendly, but at the end of the day … that shit don’t sit right with my spirit.” Cole was caught up in the needlessly combative spirit of 2024. Really, it’s our fault: “Bro, I know I don’t really feel a way, but the world wanna see blood.” The crowd didn’t know what to expect. They howled at the word “conflicted,” you’d think anticipating a doubling down on a wild accusation in “Drill”: “Your first shit was classic, your last shit was tragic / Your second shit put niggas to sleep, but they gassed it.” An undercurrent of noisy chatter in the building as Cole copped to feeling peer-pressured into the diss track suggested that he’d lost control of the narrative.
Cole’s change of heart is confounding for a few reasons. If he didn’t feel like jabbing his friend, he could’ve sat this whole thing out, recognizing that most of the darts in “Like That” seemed directed at Drake. Cole caught a bit of a stray for hyping the trio as the “Big Three,” but flying off the handle about Kendrick hating the bracket is sort of like getting froggy about Jay-Z devoting half a bar to haters at the end of “Takeover.” Cole’s is not the reply people are clamoring for; Drake is the one fielding the “Get in the booth bitch” memes.
The “Am I my brother’s keeper” posturing of “7 Minute Drill” and the public handwringing about senseless aggression afterward are also rough sells when you run through Cole’s notable 2023 guest spots. “Shooter” is a buddy movie stuffed with subliminals: “Hate how the game got away from the bars, man, this shit like a prison escape / Everybody steppers, well, fuck it, then everybody breakfast, and I’m ’bout to clear up my plate.” The Lil Yachty collaboration “The Secret Recipe” featured a fair amount of shadow-boxing: “Some activists got so rich, they prolly wish we stay oppressed / Studio steppers moving extra on songs, faking rep.” If you’re Kendrick Lamar, who spent 2022 promoting Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, you might begin to suspect this guy doesn’t fuck with you.
It’s messy for Cole to purport to be a victim of bloodlust and animosity and march up the high road when it can be argued that he released three songs amping this dispute to only vague shrapnel from Kendrick like the “Ain’t nobody but the mirror looking for the fall off” line in Mr. Morale’s “Count Me Out,” which could be a joke about Cole’s forthcoming album The Fall Off or a nothingburger everyone has misunderstood. Cole’s placement in the affirmations at the top of Kendrick’s “Savior” offers an argument for a charitable reading: “Kendrick made you think about it, but he is not your savior / Cole made you feel empowered, but he is not your savior.” Cole painting Dot out to have the itchy trigger finger is a brilliant ploy, but it’ll likely never be appreciated as such on account of the embarrassment of sending him half-hearted shots — “Lord, don’t make me have to smoke this nigga ’cause I fuck with him / But push come to shove, on this mic, I will humble him” — and switching gears before a specialized reply surfaced. It’s unsteady, the same misplaced sense for what’s offensive we saw in the anti-trans Chappellery of Might Delete Later’s “Pi” (which Cole has yet to address).
Drake has been Joker-fied for the better part of a decade and cherishes strife to the extent that he periodically bites off more than he can chew, which makes his motivational “I got my head held high” banter in the absence of a reply seem surprising. But J. Cole seeks the professorial esteem required to have tough-love conversations with other rappers while reserving the option for gun talk. He’s the type who drops the scathing “False Prophets” a week after Ye was released from a psychiatric hold in 2016 and enjoys the narrative of the long-suffering supporter coming to his legend for a heartbreaking intervention.
This is the same cognitive dissonance that played into the old tiff with Noname, when 2021’s “Snow on Tha Bluff” nitpicked the outrage of women in activist spaces after the Chicago artist subtweeted mainstream rappers avoiding protests. Cole wants to be seen as the smartest person in the room, a wise and grizzled veteran teaching you how not to trip over the pitfalls which caught him early in his career, until the photo-negative image benefits him. (This is easier for Drake, who smothered his inner moralist several cycles ago.) In Cole’s mind, he’s the peace-loving thinker and therapist and the guy aiming his automatic at your cranium in “First Person Shooter” and flying “pebbles at your dome” like Stone Temple Pilots in “7 Minute Drill.” It’s a delicate threading job, one that “Like That” threw into chaos while inviting Drake to defend the regency he claims. It’s the oldest story in hip-hop: So you’re as good as me? Prove it. They’re hemming and hawing.
