J. Cole dropped his second album, Born Sinner, via Jay-Z’s Roc Nation imprint this week, but during his visit to Cole admitted that he wasn’t a fan of Hov in his younger years, a topic that he broaches on the album’s intro, “Villuminati.”
Though the hook on “Villuminati” includes a sample of the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy” and finds Cole spitting “sometimes I brag like Hov,” before the track is over we find out that once upon a time his fanaticism for Tupac had him hating on both Jay-Z and Biggie.
“Pac had a n—- saying f— Jigga, f— Biggie, I was only like 11 so forgive me/ A decade later I be all up in the city trying to get Hov to f— with me,” he spits on the record.
“I used to get into arguments in school all the time,” Cole explained. “There was this other kid and he was a big [Jay and Biggie] fan and we used to go head to head. Of course I liked ‘Juicy,’ but the Pac fan in me was just ridin’ against whoever he was ridin’ against.”
In Cole’s defense, he hadn’t given his future boss a fair listen yet. “I’m 11 [at this point] so I’m riding against everybody,” he said. “I ain’t even know who Jay was, really. I knew just when Makaveli came out and in those interviews Pac was dissing Jay-Z and them, so I’m doing the same thing — like, ‘Jay-Z, you wack!’ My man Pac said he’s wack, so he’s wack. ‘Cause that’s how this thing works, that’s how rap works.”
Though things have certainly changed since then, the North Carolina rapper thought it’d really help to put the bigger picture in perspective. “I brought that up just to show the irony,” he said. “I was a little kid screaming that, and then I was tryna give him my CD. It’s funny how things change. It was just interesting to think that I used to be dissing Jay-Z for no reason.”
Luckily, Jay saw the humor in those bars, telling Cole, “It’s brilliant” after hearing the track.
No Comments