J. Cole has unexpectedly addressed the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, as well as his decision to bow out of it, on a new song called “Port Antonio.”
Released by surprise on Wednesday night (October 9), the five-minute track finds the Dreamville rapper defending his decision to step back from his brief battle with longtime friend and occasional collaborator Kendrick.
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“I pulled the plug because I seen where that was ’bout to go / They wanted blood, they wanted clicks to make they pockets grow / They see this fire in my pen and think I’m dodgin’ smoke / I wouldn’t have lost a battle, dawg, I woulda lost a bro / I woulda gained a foe,” he raps.
Cole then references the salacious accusations made by both Drake and Kendrick on their respective diss songs: “Jermaine is no king if that means I gotta dig up dirt and pay the whole team / Of algorithm bot n-ggas just to sway the whole thing / On social media, competing for your favorable memes to be considered best.”
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He also suggests that both rappers went too far in their feud: “I understand the thirst of being first that made ’em both swing / Protecting legacies, so lines got crossed, perhaps regrettably / My friends went to war, I walked away with all they blood on me.”
Cole later addresses his “First Person Shooter” collaborator directly: “They say I’m pickin’ sides, aye, don’t you lie on me, my n-gga / To start another war / Aye, Drake, you’ll always be my n-gga / I ain’t ashamed to say you did a lot for me, my n-gga / Fuck all the narratives / Tapping back into your magic pen is what’s imperative.”
The North Carolina native closes out the song by making a wider plea to Hip Hop: “Reminding these folks why we do it / It’s not for beefing, it’s for speaking our thoughts / Pushing ourselves, reaching the charts / Reaching your minds, deep in your heart / Screaming to find emotions to touch / Somethin’ inside to open you up / Help you cope with the rough times and shit / I’m sending love, ’cause we ain’t promised shit.”
Away from the headline-grabbing bars about his “Big Three” contemporaries, “Port Antonio” samples Lonnie Liston Smith’s “A Garden of Peace,” which rap heads will recognize from JAY-Z‘s “Dead Presidents,” as well as Cleo Sol‘s “Know That You Are Loved,” which was also recently sampled by Big Sean on “Boundaries.”
The song arrives almost exactly a year after J. Cole’s “First Person Shooter” collaboration with Drake ignited Hip Hop’s civil war.
After Kendrick Lamar fired back months later with a blistering verse on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That,” Cole engaged the Compton native by dropping the diss song “7 Minute Drill.”
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Just days after its release, however, Cole controversially apologized to Kendrick onstage at his Dreamville Festival before removing the track from streaming services.
“That shit disrupts my fucking peace,” he said in part. “That was the lamest, goofiest shit […] I pray that y’all forgive a n-gga for the misstep and I can get back to my true path.”
