If you saw J. Cole’s HBO documentary 4 Your Eyez Only, then you know Cole dropped some receipts in the form of surveillance footage to support his claims that his suburban North Carolina neighbors made the call that led to police raiding his home studio for no apparent reason.
The incident is detailed on “Neighbors,” as Cole breaks down his opinion of what happened during the song’s second verse.
“How I feel damn it’s late/I can’t sleep cause I'm paranoid/Black in a white man territory/Cops bust in with the army guns/No evidence of the harm we done/Just a couple neighbors that assume we slang/Only time they see us we be on the news in chains,” Cole rhymed.
As the 4 Your Eyez Only Tour hit Brooklyn’s Barclay’s Center this week, Cole went into some additional detail before performing “Neighbors.”
J. Cole tells the full story behind Neighbors. pic.twitter.com/oBpjhTT6kz
“Tell me why, one day out the fucking blue, 15 fucking SWAT police officers wearing some ridiculous shit from the future… I ain’t never seen no shit like this,” Cole said. “You ever played Call of Duty? It looked like some shit off of Call of Duty. The shit they was wearing, I don’t think Donald Trump’s seen the shit they had on. I don’t know if he’s approved the shit yet. It’s some shit they’ve been saving for ISIS, but they brought it to my house for some fucking reason. These niggas show up at my door deep with big ass fucking guns. They bust in the house…”
Cole’s entire 10-minute account—which was captured by the team at OnlyHipHopFacts—mirrors what the producer Elite told Complex in December of 2016 about “Neighbors” being inspired by true events.
The clip also features Cole giving play-by-play commentary while showing the footage to the Brooklyn crowd—with some funny asides about his Ikea furniture and the neighbor he believes made the call.
