The dubstep song Jay-Z urged J Cole to make: “It was such a moment”
On his debut album, Cole World: The Sideline Story, J Cole secured his place at the top of the contemporary hip-hop game, showing off his beat-making skills as well as his rapping. But one of his productions on the album was especially unexpected—it was essentially a dubstep song.
The dubstep influences on ‘Mr Nice Watch’ are undeniable, but, according to Cole himself, who spoke to Complex about the song in 2011, it happened by accident. “It wasn’t meant to be a dubstep beat,” he claimed, “but once I added that sound on top, it definitely had a big hint of that.”
Cole, who noted that the song served him especially well with his British fans, broke down his process for coming up with the track. “I just started off with the beat,” he said. “It started with one or two drum sounds, which led to the next drum sound, which led to another one, which led to the 808, which led to the synth, which led to me just rapping bullshit.”
He recorded a demo with placeholder lyrics, just to see how it sounded. He liked what he came up with, although he wasn’t entirely sure if the song had a future on his upcoming album. But there was clearly enough promise in it that he decided to show it to Jay-Z and Mark Pitts, both of whom were credited as producers on Cole World.
“I knew I liked it,” Cole said, “but I didn’t know if I had the energy to put into it since we were so close to the album being finished. Jay-Z was like, ‘Yo, you’ve got to finish that.’”
So that’s what Cole did. With deadline day fast approaching, he finished ‘Mr Nice Watch’ in a rush—and it made it onto the final album. But the process hadn’t been without its difficulties, notably when Cole failed to secure permission to use a sample from a Bone Thugs-N-Harmony song as he had initially planned to.
But he cracked on regardless, and, right at the last minute, his boss jumped on the mic for a verse, too. “We went to mastering on a Monday,” Cole recalled, “and right before the last song was done mastering, [the mastering engineer] got a call like, ‘Jay-Z said, ‘Stop the mastering process!’’ He extended it a week. I knew right there, ‘Oh, he’s trying to get his verse done.’ He just needed more time.”
Of Jay-Z’s performance, Cole described it as “such a moment” and “crazy,” and he recalled how he realised this was one of Jay’s favourite songs from the album. “Me, him, and Mark Pitts had already sat and sequenced the album,” he noted, “so I already knew he loved ‘Mr Nice Watch.’ Right when we left that meeting, I knew that was the one he loved. I had given him the instrumental and all that.”
Pitts, too, loved the dubstep-inflected song, declaring that ‘Mr Nice Watch’ was his favourite from Cole World. “It’s ridiculous,” he said of the track. “I’m proud of [Cole]. It’s ridiculous in what he’s spitting and his confidence. It’s just right. He’s very fitting on the record and his confidence on it is dope to me. The track is hot. He’s growing as a producer.”