J. Cole alluded to the day when he finally received approval from JAY-Z
While Cole is now considered part of Hip Hop’s Big Three along with Drake and Kendrick Lamar, 15 years ago he was just an artist trying to make it and impress JAY-Z, the man in charge of his Roc Nation label.
Opening up in his audio series, Inevitable, Cole traced back to those frustrating formative years-the complicated relationship he shared with the rap idol who signed him in 2009, around the time when it was a challenge to be taken seriously by JAY-Z.
It was the track Villematic-along with its powerful freestyle version over Kanye West’s Devil in a New Released in September 2010 that Signaled the Shift. In the latest episode of the 10-part series, Cole revealed that this track got a response from the usually critical JAY-Z.
“The reaction I got from Jay on that song was different,” Cole shared. “He didn’t reach out directly, but we were at the Yankee Stadium show [with Eminem]. At that point, I was signed to Jay, but I rarely saw him. He wasn’t my guy like that. I wanted him to view me as a peer, not a little brother.”
Cole threw a backstage meeting during that concert which turned the tables for him. “I saw Jay coming out of the artist lounge and he was like, ‘Cole! Yo, n-gga!’ He said, ‘That ‘Villematic’?!’ or as he called it, ‘Vill-er-matic.’ He said, ‘Woo! That’s my favorite joint I ever heard from you.’ That moment meant everything to me.”
