J. Cole Recalls Confronting JAY-Z Over Drake Collab Suggestion: 'I Was Hot'

JAY-Z once engraged J. Cole by suggesting that Drake should help him make a hit single.

According to Cole’s manager Ibrahim “Ib” Hamad, who was talking on the Dreamville rapper’s new audio series Inevitable, the incident happened at a 2011 dinner hosted by Hov and LeBron James.

“We’re having a conversation — me, Cole, Drake, Future [the Prince, Drake’s co-manager],” Ib said. “So then Jay walks in and he sees all of us together. He goes, ‘Yo!’ and he looks at Drake and he says, ‘Yo, give the boy one.’

“[He] points at Cole like, basically, ‘Give him a hit.’ We’re all like, ‘What?‘ I even remember Future’s face being like, ‘That’s embarrassing.'”

Explaining why the comment made things even more awkward, Cole himself said: “There’s a legit competition [between Drake and I]. Commercially, it’s not competitive, but culturally, it’s still a competitive sport where people were like, ‘Cole or Drake?'”

“And on top of that, I got a song with him on the project I just dropped three months ago!” he added, referring to “In the Morning” from his Friday Night Lights mixtape.

Ib then revealed that Cole was less than happy at his label boss’ suggestion: “I felt embarrassed for Cole, I felt embarrassed for Drake. What I do remember is being at the dinner after that and I’m just looking at Cole and he looks pissed.”

“I was hot,” Cole added.

The North Carolina native said he boldly confronted JAY-Z over the remark later that night while drunk on Hennessy.

“I remember walking up to him. As I get within, like, seven feet of him and he sees me approaching, he looks at me like, ‘Cole! Just one, give me one. Please!'” Cole recalled. “He’s got his hands folded, like praying hands emoji.

“I’m like, ‘Yo, lemme ask you a question’ — I’ve never spoken like this to Jay in my life — ‘when you was working on Reasonable Doubt, did you have somebody telling you that you needed a single?’ He was like, ‘Nah, I didn’t.’

“[I was like], ‘So why you keep doing that me?’ […] I put an extra little in there. I said, ‘You over here trying to tell me I need one, you telling me to go in with [pop production duo] Stargate. It’s easy to put me in with Stargate after they already got ‘Black & Yellow’ by Wiz Khalifa. Where’s the vision?’

“He was like, ‘They with us. We signed Stargate.’ And I was like, ‘Exactly. Wiz got the hit with them. You didn’t put me in with them before the hit.'”

J. Cole then recalled Jigga’s measured response to his impassioned question: “One of the many things that I respect about Jay, this n-gga heard me say that, thought about it for a second and said, ‘You right. I respect that. You right.'”

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He added: “That shit felt good. It felt good to be able to get that off, it felt good to have been received. And after that, I never heard that again of like, ‘Where’s the single?'”

Cole also recently discussed his efforts to win over JAY-Z, despite the fact the rap legend had already signed him to his then-newly formed label Roc Nation.

During a previous episode of Inevitable, the “Middle Child” MC said that Jay got on his side after he dropped “Villematic” in late 2010, a freestyle over Kanye West‘s “Devil in a New Dress.”

“The reaction that I got from Jay on this song — he didn’t hit me or nothing, but we were at that Yankee Stadium show [with Eminem],” he said. “You have to understand at this time, yeah, I was signed to Jay but it wasn’t like Jay is my man. Nah, seeing Jay was a rare occasion.

“I always was like, ‘This is somebody I idolize and really respect, but I still want to do it on my own.’ I wanted [him to look at me] as a peer [rather than as a little brother].”

Cole then added: “I see Jay coming out of the artist lounge where friends and family be at and he was like, ‘Cole! Yo, n-gga!’

“I’ll never forget it ’cause he said it like this: ‘That ‘Villematic’?!’ He called it ‘Vill-er-matic’ [laughs]. He said, ‘Woo! That’s my favorite joint I ever heard from you.’ That was a moment for me.”