J. Cole has previewed two unreleased songs with Kendrick Lamar dating back to 2010 – find out more below.
READ MORE: Kendrick Lamar – ‘GNX’ review: turning hatred into a teachable moment
Cole, who recently launched the Inevitable “limited audio series” podcast to chronicle his career and artistic evolution, has appeared on a recent episode where he previewed unreleased music featuring Kendrick Lamar dating back over a decade.
The two songs, ‘Temptations’ and ‘Shock The World’, were according to J. Cole recorded by both artists sometime in 2010 after the two had met at a cover shoot for that year’s XXL Freshman list that Cole and Kendrick’s label mate TDE’s Jay Rock were featured on.
J Cole. Photo credit: Price Williams/Wireimage
During one of their meetings after said shoot, Cole played the two tracks for Kendrick and had offered him those songs. Cole recounted: “I played him ‘Temptation’ with my verse on it, I played him a couple of other joints that had one verse on it. When I played them for him, I was like, ‘Bro, you can have these if you want.’”
J. Cole continued: “I remember he said — and it always stuck with me ’cause I had never heard nobody say this to me before — he was like, ‘N***a, are you sure you want to give me these?!’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, go ahead, take them.’ He was like, ‘Bro, you sleeping on yourself.’ It struck me because it was actually the stone cold truth of my reality at that time. I was so focused on getting this unicorn hit for my album that I was actually sleeping on the shit that I did well.”
Check out a recording of the podcast episode and ‘Temptations’ and ‘Shock The World’ below.
J. Cole played two unreleased songs with Kendrick Lamar on the new “Inevitable” audio series episode
• Temptations
• Shock The World
— sinneD (@dennis_k_g) November 26, 2024
This isn’t the first time that snippets of both songs have been previewed before – thought this is the first time longer versions of the songs have been heard by the public. Kendrick once a bit played ‘Temptation’ for fans at a meet-and-greet in 2014 – check it out below.
The previews of their 2010 collaborations come after a rough spell for the former friends and collaborators. A joint album between the pair had been reported since 2010, and they managed to join forces on 2013 track ‘Forbidden Fruit’. In November last year, Cole said that their joint album was at one point “a real thing”.
However in 2023, J. Cole also featured on Drake’s ‘First Person Shooter’, where the former boasted: “Love when they argue the hardest MC / Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me? / We the big three like we started a league.”
The “big three” claim evoked a response from Kendrick Lamar, who responded on ‘Like That’, which was shared as part of Future and Metro Boomin’s new collaborative album ‘We Don’t Trust You’: “Motherfuck the big three, n****, it’s just big me”.
Drake and Lamar then entered a scathing rap feud, trading numerous diss tracks targeting each other. Cole did originally reply with ‘7 Minute Drill’ on the mixtape ‘Might Delete Later’, but retracted the diss track and apologised swiftly after.
Kendrick Lamar during the ‘Not Like Us’ music video shoot. Credit: Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The Drake-Lamar conflict came to a halt this May after the Toronto star dropped ‘The Heart Part 6’, on which he claimed his team fed Lamar false information and denied allegations of pedophilia lobbied against him on ‘Meet The Grahams’ and ‘Not Like Us’.
This past weekend, Kendrick Lamar surprise-released a full album ‘GNX’. In a five-star review of ‘GNX’, Kyann-Sian Williams wrote for NME: “‘GNX’ starts off with such an ominous tone that doesn’t necessarily leave. But Lamar channels what could be interpreted as hate and negativity into a teachable moment, leading you to draw upon the purest emotion known to man: love. In a year that started with so much venom, Kendrick Lamar shares the antidote on ‘GNX’.”
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