{"id":5543,"date":"2026-03-21T16:34:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T16:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/2026\/03\/j-cole-talks-exit-drake-kendrick-beef\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T16:34:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T16:34:22","slug":"j-cole-talks-exit-drake-kendrick-beef","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/2026\/03\/j-cole-talks-exit-drake-kendrick-beef\/","title":{"rendered":"Timely Tapout: J. Cole Talks Bowing Out Of Drake & Kendrick Beef, Says Wife Cried When He Apologized"},"content":{"rendered":"
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J. Cole<\/a> is finally breaking his silence on why he decided to bow out of the Kendrick Lamar<\/a> and Drake<\/a> lyrical scuffle that took over most of 2024 and 2025. <\/p>\n

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Source: Kevin Mazur\/ Earl Gibson III \/ Cole Burston<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During a sit-down with Apple Music, inside of his childhood home, the Fayetteville-born rapper talked about his early exit from the rap beef between two of his most successful contemporaries. When Kendrick\u2019s initial shots in the beef rang out during his guest verse on Future\u2019s \u201cLike That\u201d<\/a> record, he seemed to be taking aim at both Drake and J. Cole with the line, \u201cmotherf**kthe big 3\/n<\/em>****, it\u2019s just big me<\/em>.\u201d <\/p>\n

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Though his initial reaction was a response titled \u201c7 Minute Drill\u201d<\/a> on the Might Delete Later<\/em> mixtape, he later removed the track and apologized to Kendrick during his annual Dreamville Festival<\/a>. He has been mum on the feud between the two rappers since that moment until now. <\/p>\n

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\u201cIt hit me an hour before [hitting the stage],\u201d Cole said of his public apology. \u201cBefore that, I was stressing the f**k out. Then the moment for the idea came to me like a guide, and I lifted, and I got light, and I got excited. I got so excited because to tell you, three or four days before that it was like, \u2018Oh my, nah, this is terrible.\u2019 Because I felt like I misrepresented myself. You know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He continued, <\/p>\n

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\u201cI felt miserable about it. So I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh my God, I gotta go on this stage and come out here and pretend almost. Like, people think that I\u2019m representing that.\u2019\u00a0Might Delete Later<\/em>\u00a0had just dropped\u2026the drama of all of this is the biggest news happening, and I\u2019m coming out as a representative of what the f**k they just heard. So an hour before it was like, \u2018Oh, aha. Like, yo, in a very loud manner, you know, on a very public forum on your album, you said some s**t you didn\u2019t believe in. Now you got the opportunity to go on a bigger forum, you know what I mean? A bigger stage is being livestreamed and say something that you believe in.\u2019 And in that moment, I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, thank you, God.’\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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On top of not wanting to give \u201clife to division and negative storylines\u201d about Kendrick, Cole says it had also been weighing on him because of the love and respect he has for the Compton rapper. Their bond was so tight that even Cole\u2019s wife had an emotional reaction his decision to apologize publicly. <\/p>\n

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\u201cShe start crying because she know how I feel about him. You know what I mean? Like she knows, and she saw how it was weighing on me the two, three days before that,\u201d he said. \u201cShe could see in my whole energy. And she would even ask me, and I\u2019m just like, \u2018Yeah, I got a lot going on right now.’\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Cole seems to be holding on to his neutral stance as he expressed his love and respect for both Drake and Kendrick during the interview. <\/p>\n

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\u201cFirst of all, those is dudes that \u2014 I admire these dudes,\u201d he explained. \u201cI got genuine love for these dudes. Like, I hate to see the world s**t on either one of them in defense of the other\u2026That s**t is, even saying it out loud is a little silly.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rap fans were evenly split on either applauding the maturity of Cole\u2019s decision or wishing he\u2019d extended a friendly fade in the name of hip hop; however, the Fall Off\u201d<\/em> rapper seems to have stayed true to what mattered to him. And you gotta respect that!<\/p>\n

Watch the full J. Cole interview below.<\/p>\n

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The post Timely Tapout: J. Cole Talks Bowing Out Of Drake & Kendrick Beef, Says Wife Cried When He Apologized<\/a> appeared first on Bossip<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

J. Cole is finally breaking his silence on why he decided to bow out of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14044,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[10,9],"class_list":["post-5543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-rss","tag-culture","tag-hip-hop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14044"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}