J. Cole took a few pages from the book of Hov for his new Kendrick Lamar response cut “7 Minute Drill.”
In case you woke up in a state of confusion amid the Friday morning chaos, here’s a quick recap: Cole surprise-dropped a new project, Might Delete Later, that closes with a track boasting numerous choice lines aimed at Kendrick in response to his Big 3-dismantling “Like That” verse. Naturally, fans responded with copious memery, not unlike how the world reacted to Kendrick's verse on the We Don't Trust You cut.
Amid the lyrical breakdowns, studious listeners were quick to point out that a few Cole lines saw the Dreamville boss borrowing from Jay-Z's Ye-produced 2001 track “Takeover,” itself a diss joint aimed at Nas and Mobb Deep’s Prodigy. (As fellow FOB heads will note, the track was later referenced in the band's “The Take Over, The Breaks Over” track off their 2007 album Infinity on High, which opens with a cameo from Hov himself.)
In the second verse of “7 Minute Drill,” Cole assesses Kendrick’s catalog in a Jay-esque manner, like so:
Four albums in twelve years, n***a, I can divide
On “Takeover,” Jay made a similar division-focused boast against Nas:
Four albums in ten years, n***a? I can divide
Earlier into his Might Delete Later closer, Cole paraphrases another line from “Takeover”—his original idol and the man who signed him—by arguing that Kendrick’s been averaging “one hard verse like every 30 months.” This calls to mind a similar mathematical dig from Jay, who rapped back in 2001 that Nas was averaging “one hot album” per decade.
Of course, fans haven’t let any of this slip past them, as evidenced below.
As for how Cole’s fellow “Like that” dissee Drake is taking all of this, the “Summer Games” sequel denier has thus far relegated his responses to cryptic IG captions. Could we see more from the 6 God in the coming days? Stay tuned.
Until then, peep Jordan Rose’s “7 Minute Drill” breakdown here.
