We now know why the J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar joint album never saw the light of day. Well, because it never actually existed.
Cole addressed the long-rumored effort during the latest episode of A Safe Place podcast co-hosted by Lil Yachty and MitchGoneMad. At one point during the extensive sit-down, Yachty asked the Dreamville rapper about the “huge, infamous, mystery” that surfaced more than a decade ago, when K. Dot began teasing his big collaboration with Cole.
The Off-Season artist confirmed he and Kendrick had discussed the project early on in their careers, but never had the opportunity to fully pursue it.
“This was before his first album… this might’ve even been before mine,” Cole said. “In a nutshell, he had pulled up on me at [producer] No ID’s spot, after we was already building this relationship, and I had these beats at the time and I was playing them for him.”
He continued: “Was that our first time linking? ‘HiiiPoWeR’ (2011) one of them beats? There’s a few beats, a gang of beats that I did — I gave him. Some of them maybe had a hook on them, a verse; this, that, and the third. So he took them, and in that moment, we talked about, ‘Yo, bro, we should do a project.’ At that time, he’s not on like that, but I’m fuckin’ with him.”
Cole said he planned on addressing the matter in an upcoming podcast series that will premiere during the rollout of his next album, The Fall Off; however, he did shed some light on how the collaboration rumors began circulating.
“I think at that time, [Kendrick] being so excited — ‘cause that’s a look for him at that point — so I think he went to Twitter like, ‘Me and J. Cole got something crazy comin.’ And he put up a picture of us. In that moment we did talk about it. Then, a couple of months before his first album came out, we worked on a bus and he came to Fayetteville… he came and we did a few more songs on the bus. So at one point, it was a real thing.”
Although the rappers had every intention of releasing a joint album, Cole said their respective schedules made it difficult for them to “go in and do it correctly.”
“‘Cause that would take time. For us to do something that’s full of our potential… you’re gonna need time,” he explained. “At least a year. When you have two successful artists with lives and families, that’s hard to do… We put [the rumors] to bed years ago. But at one point in time, it was a real conversation, for sure.”
So, is there a Cole x Kendrick project just sitting in the vault somewhere?
Unfortunately for fans, the answer is no.
“It’s not, like, it’s a ton of songs,” Cole revealed. “It’s not like it’s some album sitting on the shelf somewhere.”
Check out Cole’s full interview up top.
