The one song that got J Cole signed to Jay-Z: “A big part of my career”
J Cole began his career in the latter half of the 2000s. His debut mixtape, The Come Up, dropped in 2007 and introduced the North Carolina rapper to the world with original tracks and by rapping over Kanye West, Nas, Jay-Z, and Ghostface Killah beats. Just years later, his world changed forever after Jay-Z signed him to Roc Nation, but how did it happen?
‘Lights Please‘ has played a pivotal role in his career, both musically and in how people paid attention to him from a fan and executive perspective. The song convinced his manager, Mark Pitts, current RCA Records president, to work with him after A&R Kirk Lightburn had tried to play it for him for a while.
“That’s the first song my manager Mark Pitts heard from me,” Cole told Complex. “Kirk Lightburn had been trying to get him the song. He’d been trying to get him to listen to my music for six months and Mark wouldn’t listen because he’s a busy man. He wasn’t really trying to check for no rappers.
“One day in the office, Mark went to the bathroom. Kirk was like, ‘Fuck It.’ He just put the CD in while he was in the bathroom. Mark heard the song as he was walking back from the bathroom. He was about to leave the office but he heard the music and he said it was like, ‘I smelled food. I just had to go in.’ Like, he had to go where the smell was coming from.”
The following day, Cole was called to his office, which led to his music being put in front of Jay-Z. “He heard it and he had an incredible reaction, so he called me,” he recalled. “I was in his office the very next morning and the same shit happened with Jay-Z. He played my shit to Jay-Z, and Jay had the same reaction as him. [The song] is why he wanted to meet me, and the meeting got me a deal.
“When history is told 10, 15 years from now, 20, 30, 40 years from now, it’s important that they know that song was a big part of my career. I wanted to do that song justice, it deserved more than [to be on a mixtape].”
‘Lights Please’ appeared on The Warm Up and his debut album, Cole World: A Sideline Story. Cole wanted to give the formative song the attention it deserved on a major label album. The track boasts over 111million Spotify streams, and the music video has also racked up 3.5 million YouTube views.
“It always deserved to be on the album—even when I put it on a mixtape, it was still an album song,” Cole said. “I’m just giving it its proper due. It’s like that for the second album too. I got a lot of songs that didn’t go on this album that I been holding the same amount of time I’ve been holding ‘Lost Ones’ and ‘Lights Please’. There’s a proper time for them. Maybe they need to be remade and adjusted, but they’re still too good to be wasted.”