J Cole names Kanye West as his “favourite artist”
J Cole and Kanye West have had their differences in recent years, but the Dreamville rapper will never forget just how much he inspired him before his career kicked off into superstardom.
On the first episode of his new audio series, Inevitable, Cole opened up about the impact Ye has had on his career. When he was just a kid with dreams of becoming a rapper, J Cole didn’t see himself in any of the hip-hop stars at the time. Things changed shortly before he went to college when West was brought to his attention, which was the moment he realised his lyrics could take him places.
“[My life] was nothing like my favourite rappers,” he explained. “It wasn’t like Jay-Z’s life looked like. It was nothing like fucking ‘Pac’s life appeared to be. It wasn’t nothing gangster about it. So I had a hard time seeing myself as somebody that, the lifestyle portion was kind of like, I didn’t really get it. I didn’t know how to talk about my life in a way that people could connect with.”
He continued, “Then fucking Kanye West happened, right before I went to college. In the summer of 2003 before I went to college, the ‘Through the Wire’ video dropped and that shit changed my life, first of all, and I became a massive Kanye fan. And Kanye was the first time that I saw myself in somebody, damn near, like, ‘Oh, wait.'”
From then, the Chicago native became his number one artist and paved the way for him to take his music career seriously. “This n*gga just made it possible to just talk about your life or your regular arse perspective in a way that’s appealing,” he said. “This n*gga became my favourite artist at that point, so he kind of cracked my mind open. When I did jump back in, right before my sophomore year, I didn’t know it, but I had somehow developed an angle.”
The pair have had a rocky relationship over the years, with J. Cole subliminally taking shots at Kanye West on ‘False Prophets’ in 2016. Charlamagne Tha God claimed that Ye felt Cole was “always dissing him” on songs, but they eventually patched things up with a phone call. Kanye then posted a screenshot of the call, which Cole wasn’t too pleased about.
“That made me feel a certain type of way,” he told Angie Martinez. “I told him that. He apologised, for the record. I told him that it felt like you just used my name in that very quick conversation for social media and to keep your thing going or whatever you were doing. It felt like it wasn’t sincere because of that.”
Cole has praised Kanye West in the past, calling The College Dropout creator a “life-changing” album and revealing that he became addicted to music after listening to his songs.