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In 2024, Harlem rap legend Cam'ron had a verse on "Ready '24," a track from J. Cole's Might Delete Later mixtape. Earlier this year, Cam sued Cole over that feature. Cam didn't make a huge noise about the lawsuit, but it still became a news story. As it turns out, that lawsuit, at least according to Cam, was simply an attempt to get Cole's attention. Cole owed Cam a podcast interview, and Cam intended to collect. Now, that podcast interview has finally happened, and it involves a whole lot of big-news rap stories.
Advance clips of Cam'ron's Talk With Flee podcast interview with J. Cole have been circulating and making the news for a few days. One of those advance clips was about the lawsuit situation, with Cole saying he was "hurt, almost disappointed" when he got served. The way the two of them tell the story, Cam did his verse for free, with the understanding that Cole would appear on his podcast. When he kept not hearing back from Cole, his lawyers quoted a $300,000 fee for the verse.
Cole thought he'd agreed to do the show at some indeterminate future point, and Cam didn't want to get brushed off. They're cool now, though. Cam says he never wanted the case to go to trial: "Of course, it was never gonna go nowhere. But for me, it was more like, 'I need to get this n***a attention.'"
The interview also got extra attention because of a clip where Cole talked about famously backing out of the Kendrick Lamar/Drake beef and deleting his diss track "7 Minute Drill." Cole said that he was in the uncomfortable position of liking both of those guys. Cole just released his long-awaited double album The Fall Off, and the album was in process at the time of the feud. On the podcast, Cole says that Kendrick was originally going to appear on two tracks from that album. But he didn't like the way people treated Drake in that moment, either: "To me, it’s like disgusting how people try to use that opportunity to either show how they really felt about Drake the whole time or just pile on and tear this dude down and create a narrative as if he’s not great."
When Cam asked where he's at with both of those guys, Cole said:
I’m in the same place. Where it’s like, Yo, I genuinely love these n***as, but I’m not going to act like we’ve been communicating and talking. I’ve had conversations with them post-everything, but it’s not like it’s a lot. That’s me not knowing where they at. Me maybe assuming, ’cause I done heard XYZ, but it has nothing to do with how I actually feel. I genuinely love these n***as. I be wanting to shoot off a text, you know what I mean? Even saying that on a mic is kind of lame to me, but it is my truth.
The full 83-minute podcast interview came out yesterday. It's also got stuff about Cole's backstory and his love of basketball, and he confirms the old story about him and Sean Combs getting into a physical altercation at a VMAs after-party: "It did happen, but the stories be wrong. The narratives around it be wrong." He doesn't want to tell the whole story, though, because he says it would be "like kicking a man when he's down."
Stars on Cole's level don't often do long, candid, semi-gossipy interviews like this, even with peers and podcasters, and the dynamic of this conversation is pretty interesting. You can see the whole thing below.
English (US) · 