J. Cole has addressed his often-talked-about apology to Kendrick Lamar following his 2024 diss in a new freestyle from Birthday Blizzard ‘26.
On a track from the surprise-dropped project, Cole raps, “I used to be top, see, the apology dropped me way out of the top 3/ No problem, I’m probably my best when they doubt me.”
“The top ain’t really what I thought it would be, so I jumped off and landed back at the bottom and restarted at a level where I wasn’t regarded as much, just to climb past them again and tell them all to keep up,” Cole continued.
Cole’s lines referenced the “7 Minute Drill” diss track that he dropped towards Lamar before the latter started his highly-publicized rap beef with Drake in 2024. On the track, Cole didn’t really throw any heavy sluggers K. Dot’s way; he just called his music boring.
Soon after though, J. Cole took to the stage at his Dreamville Festival in North Carolina to issue a lengthy apology message to Lamar.
“I put out this project on Friday called, Might Delete Later... I don’t know how many people checked it out or whatever,” he rapped. “And, I swear to God… I’m so proud of that project. Because, I know, one, it’s just an EP that leads me to this thing that I’ve been working on for a long time and I know the work it took to get to a certain type of skill level… that shit mean a lot to me… I’m so proud of that project, except for one part.”
Cole continued on, expressing that he knows his peers and fans will be upset at what he’s preparing to do. “Y’all love Kendrick Lamar, correct? As do I,” Cole said.
“So I just wanna come up here and publicly be like bruh, that was the lamest goofiest shit, and I say all that to say it made me feel like 10 years ago when I was moving incorrectly, and I pray that god will line me back up on my purpose and my path, I pray that my n***a didn’t feel no way,” Cole added. “And if he did, my n***a, I got my chin out, take your best shot, I’ma take that shit on the chin, boy. Do what you do. all good. It’s love. And I pray that y’all will like, forgive a n***a for the misstep and I can get back to my true path, ’cause I ain’t gonna lie to y’all, the past two days felt terrible.”
Cole will probably have more bars referencing the situation on his upcoming album, The Fall Off that arrives on Feb. 6.
