One of the big 3, J. Cole recently opened up about his first encounter with Drake’s music and how it impacted his own artistic journey. That’s a cool thing to say, albeit many months after all that went down and rocked the Hip Hop landscape.
In a conversation on his audio series Inevitable, co-hosted with Dreamville co-founder Ibrahim Hamad, the 39-year-old rapper recalled discovering Drake’s music on MySpace, long before Drake was the global superstar he is today.
Myspace. Remember, Myspace? Off topic but those were the days. Before all the toxicity on social media. Before the unattainable was force fed onto your feeds. A simpler time.
“It was one dude in particular that I remember seeing on MySpace,” Cole began. “He was this light-skinned R&B-looking nia, but he had raps.” Cole describes how Drake’s sound, which blended neo-soul with rap, immediately stood out to him. He was especially impressed by the smooth, confident tone Drake conveyed in his music. Despite being relatively unknown at the time, Drake’s tracks were getting massive plays—something Cole couldn’t ignore. “I was like, ‘Who is this nia?! How does he have 20,000 plays in a day?!’” Cole recalled.
Get this, the way it was said at this point Cole didn’t yet know that Drake was also an actor from the popular show Degrassi. He was drawn in by songs like “Sooner Than Later” and Drake’s freestyle over Kanye West’s “Say You Will” beat, titled “Say What’s Real.” Cole was particularly struck by Drake’s skill on the track, saying, “He fking destroyed that sht. I was blown away at how much he bodied that fking beat. I was like, ‘Yo, he’s f*king phenomenal.’”
But what’s real was hearing Drake’s music put Cole in a reflective, even conflicted, mental space. “For so long, I felt confident in the fact that I was the only one occupying that space, the only one with that perspective and that sharp of a pen,” Cole explained. “I was like, ‘That’s gonna be my thing, that’s what’s gonna separate me from the pack.’” But when he heard Drake’s music, he realized there was someone else out there who was thinking the same way and working just as hard. “I was like, ‘There was someone else out there the whole time that was working maybe just as hard as I was,’” Cole said.
The realization changed his approach to his own work. Cole shifted his mindset going into the production of his 2009 mixtape The Warm Up. “I’m not even anybody yet. And this ni*a’s off to the races with hits, like cultural-shifting sht,” Cole said, reflecting on how Drake was already making waves. At that point, Cole had to rethink his initial vision for The Warm Up, which he had originally planned to be a mixtape full of freestyles, much like Kobe Bryant’s relentless dedication to his craft in basketball.
Drake has often spoken highly of J. Cole, calling him a “GOAT” and even mentioning that Cole would be involved in his wedding. The two have since collaborated on several tracks, including “In the Morning,” “Jodeci Freestyle,” and more recently, “First Person Shooter” and “Evil Ways.” They also toured together in late 2023 and early 2024, before their respective feuds with Kendrick Lamar became a topic of conversation.
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