After months of silence, J. Cole has finally addressed the simmering beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar with a new surprise track called Port Antonio.
The Cole World rapper took to Instagram on Wednesday to drop his 5-minute track and he didn’t hold back about why he had to bow out of the beef between his longtime friend Drake and his frequent collaborator, K.Dot.
On the track, he raps about how he saw things escalating between the two heavyweights and knew it was going to get ugly.
“I pulled the plug because I seen where that was ’bout to go / They wanted blood, they wanted clicks to make they pockets grow / They see this fire in my pen and think I’m dodgin’ smoke / I wouldn’t have lost a battle, dawg, I woulda lost a bro / I woulda gained a foe,” he rapped.
Cole even called out how both Drake and Kendrick were throwing low blows in their diss tracks, saying, “Jermaine is no king if that means I gotta dig up dirt and pay the whole team / Of algorithm bot n-ggas just to sway the whole thing / On social media, competing for your favorable memes to be considered best.”
It was clear Cole wasn’t feeling how the beef turned into a messy social media spectacle, so he stepped back, calling out both Drake and Kendrick for taking it too far.
“I understand the thirst of being first that made ’em both swing / Protecting legacies, so lines got crossed, perhaps regrettably / My friends went to war, I walked away with all they blood on me.”
In a heartfelt moment, Cole then addresses Drake directly, “They say I’m pickin’ sides, aye, don’t you lie on me, my n-gga / To start another war / Aye, Drake, you’ll always be my n-gga / I ain’t ashamed to say you did a lot for me, my n-gga / Fuck all the narratives / Tapping back into your magic pen is what’s imperative.”
He then closes the track by addressing Hip Hop itself as a whole, “Reminding these folks why we do it / It’s not for beefing, it’s for speaking our thoughts / Pushing ourselves, reaching the charts / Reaching your minds, deep in your heart.”
This track comes months after Cole’s First Person Shooter collab with Drake that basically set the whole feud on fire.
As quickly as Cole dropped his diss, he pulled it back, apologized to K.Dot, and removed it from streaming services. Now, with Port Antonio, we understand why.
