The bizarre J Cole and Rihanna sex tape rumour: “It was so strange for me”
Fame, for all its obvious glitzy benefits, comes with its bitter downsides. Becoming a source of relentless tabloid fascination must be fairly bleak, with hordes of strangers constantly scrutinising and gossiping over your every move. Sometimes people just straight-up make things up, and rumours quickly begin to spread. That was a lesson that J Cole had to learn about really early on in his career.
Even before Cole had released his first album, Cole World: The Sideline Story, in September 2011, a buzz had started to hum around him. In the run-up to the release, he’d been the opening act on Rihanna’s tour—and people were starting to talk. In fact, the pornographic magazine Hustler made a big, seedy claim: “Hustler,” read a press release the publication put out, “are in possession of the Rihanna and J Cole tape. We have seen it and we do not know what we are going to do with it yet.”
In a bleakly predictable turn, this caused a minor sensation and both Rihanna and Cole were forced to issue their public denials. “We don’t believe U,” Rihanna responded on Twitter. “U need more people… AND of course an actual sextape! #slownewsday.”
Cole, who around this time would still have been inexperienced with this level of public exposure, also denied the rumours of a sex tape and, also, of the claim that he’d been dismissed by his label, Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. Speaking to MTV2, he said, “I just let ’em talk. They also say I’ve got a sex tape and they say I got dropped from Roc Nation.”
Noting that the Rihanna sex tape rumour had really taken off, Cole called it “an annoying compliment,” presumably referring to the idea that he’d be capable of sleeping with Rihanna. He was trying to put a positive spin on what, really, must have been an unsettling fixation on his personal life. “The fact that they’re even talking and I don’t have no album out and I’m making the little… gossip sites [is cool],” he said.
The following year, with his debut album out there in the world, and with a little more experience of mega-fame behind him, Cole again addressed the sex tape hearsay. When asked by GQ what the strangest rumour to follow him around was, he responded, “That I had a sex tape with me and Rihanna. Or that I was dropped from Roc Nation and Jay-Z had beef with me. They all happened in a two-week span of blog rumours. It was so strange for me but it really showed me how rumours work—they come from nowhere. As long as they make sense to people, that is all that seems to matter.”