J. Cole appears on the latest episode of Rap Radar with Elliott Wilson and Brian "B.Dot" Miller, talking about how he first got started to launching his own record label and artist roster with Dreamville. He also revealed that shortly before Nipsey Hussle tragically passed away, the two talked about working on a track together.
Asked at the 12:05 point of the podcast why he decided to bring out Meek during his Dreamville Fest performance, Cole replied, "When Nipsey got killed, the first person I thought about after obviously thinking about Nipsey and how fucked up the situation was, the first person I thought about was Meek."
Explaining further, he added, "I know he don't move that close to the neighborhood no more, but I just thought about him as somebody that's so important. I really thought about it like this...I don't know, Meek popped up in my mind. I was just like, damn he's somebody that people would love to see and we haven't had our moment yet. We haven't got no joint together really."
From there, Wilson mentioned how Cole wishes he could have worked with Nipsey. "We had text like maybe three weeks ago," Cole said of Nip. "He was like, 'Yo, I would love to...,' I'm like, 'Hell yeah, this the year.' Cause when he hit me I realized, 'Damn we ain't got no joint together.' ... So when he hit me I was like, 'Bro this the year, we gotta get one.'" He added, "This year was supposed to be the year."
During the festival, he also dedicated a performance of "Love Yourz" to the West Coast legend. "I just seen footage yesterday of all types of different sets and hoods walking together in L.A. to pay homage and pay respect to Nipsey Hussle," he told the crowd. "So, I need us to do the same thing tonight."
Earlier, at the 7:10 mark of the podcast, Cole spoke about why he dropped "Middle Child" out of nowhere. "It was urgent," he stressed. "I haven't had a lot of urgent records, do you know what I mean? You think about Drake 'I'm on One,' that's urgent. That was like, super urgent. It had to be out, it had to be heard. I felt like this was similiar. JAY-Z used to say that to me, he's talking to me about that joint he got with Swizz, 'On to the Next One.' He was like, 'Yeah that's Swizz, he be hitting you with the urgent joints.' That always stuck out to me, and that's how I felt about 'Middle Child.'"
He was right; on Friday the RIAA announced "Middle Child" went double platinum, making it the only release of 2019 so far to hit multi-plat status.
Cole also said on the podcast that he wants to step out of his comfort zone a bit more, and not always choose to sit on some of his songs for "eight months" at a time before dropping them. At 19:10 he mentioned how he wants to bring his Dreamville roster up to TDE level. "They run has been incredible and they still going," he explained. "Everybody on Dreamville better than me, in my eyes."
Watch the full episode of the Rap Radar podcast here via TIDAL.
