J. Cole continues to be the preeminent face of a specific microgenre I like to call Podcast Rap, the general idea being that you don’t have to listen to these songs more than once, but they’ll give a roundtable of dinguses something to chew on for a week. “What If,” off Cole’s new album The Fall-Off, is an instant Podcast Rap classic. On this track, Cole raps from the perspectives of Biggie and Tupac and imagines a timeline where they apologize to each other and mend their brotherhood through cute Nicholas Sparks letters before things get tragic. It’s skillful rapping: He weaves in and out of hypothetical conversations and biographical details; he captures little intricacies of their flows and manner of speech. But this isn’t a song about Biggie and Tupac, it’s Cole’s bird’s-eye view of the Drake and Kendrick beef—an important condition of Podcast Rap is to still care deeply about that beef. All the drama in 2024 made Cole come to a profound conclusion, one that’s only been 41 years in the making: What if we all got along? OK guys, mics on:
Joe Budden: Cole is talking that shit, this is dope!
Joe Budden Employee # 1: You gotta salute him for being a real man. Too many of us are afraid of the accountability that comes with apologies.
Joe Budden Employee #2: As a man, I’d never apologize to one of my homies.
Joe Budden: That’s ’cause you’re a fucking asshole who needs therapy.
Joe Budden Employee #2: My ex-wife tried to get me to go to therapy. You know I’m always saying—
Joe Budden Employee #3: Come on guys, enough of that. Let’s take it back to Cole—you could say this is really why he deserves his spot in the Big Three.
Joe Budden: That’s why I’m not paying you.
Thank you for giving us this rich text, Cole.
