The 2013 altercation between Diddy and J Cole that was caused by Kendrick Lamar
J Cole isn’t typically associated with beefs and feuds, but that’s not to say he hasn’t gotten into a few during his day. He is, after all, a famous rapper.
The most high-profile of Cole’s scrapes was probably with none other than Sean “Diddy” Combs, with whom things got tense as far back as 2013. Cole was still relatively early into his career at that stage, while Diddy, obviously, had long been a powerful figure within hip-hop. It was quite something for a newcomer to take him on.
Specific details about what happened are hazy, but the general outlines of the story suggest that Kendrick Lamar was at the centre of Cole and Diddy’s issues. His guest verse on Big Sean’s ‘Control’ had recently come out and annoyed a lot of people, most famously Drake. But Diddy also wasn’t happy with what Kendrick said on it.
Kendrick mentioned a lot of his fellow rappers on that song, declaring his intention to “murder” them. The Compton rapper also called himself as the King of New York, which, as one might imagine, didn’t go down terribly well with a lot of rappers from the Big Apple. Diddy, especially, is said to have been incensed.
This came to a head, the story goes, at an afterparty for 2013’s MTV Video Music Awards. Rumour has it that Diddy attempted to pour a drink over Kendrick’s head, although that account has been disputed. But whatever happened is said to have pulled in J Cole, whose crew got involved and scuffled with Diddy’s.
How exactly things played out at that afterparty is contested, but something tense clearly occurred. Cole even addressed it in 2021, rapping about Diddy on his song ‘l e t . g o . m y . h a n d,’ which appeared on his album The Off-Season.
“My last scrap was with Puff Daddy, who would’ve thought it?” he raps. “I bought that n*gga album in seventh grade and played it so much / You would’ve thought my favourite rapper was Puff / Back then I ain’t know shit, now I know too much.”
These lines acknowledge that a dispute had certainly bubbled up between Cole and Diddy, but the song itself nonetheless served as a sort of reconciliation between them. Diddy himself appears on the outro, indicating that the pair had buried the hatchet.
In March 2026, Cole jumped onto Cam’ron’s Talk With Flee podcast and confirmed that an altercation had, indeed, occurred at the VMAs afterparty in 2013, but he said he didn’t want to go into any details about it now. After Diddy’s conviction, Cole said it would be like “damn near kicking a man when he’s down.” In light of that, rumour and speculation about the incident continue to reign.