Two unreleased collaborations between J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar were recently played on the former’s Inevitable podcast.
The Dreamville founder and his manager, Ibrahim “Ib” Hamad, shared the untitled joints during the podcast’s latest episode. As per the duo, the songs were recorded in 2012 when Drake‘s “Club Paradise Tour” — which had Dot and A$AP Rocky as the opening acts— was taking place in North Carolina. “[Lamar] came to Fayetteville and we worked on that studio bus for two or three days,” Cole shared, adding that one of the tracks was produced by Oddisee. “Before, I had sent him joints, but this was the first time we actually got to lock in and work on sh*t. And that sh*t was so fun, dawg… It felt like when your cousin would come over to your house.”
The rapper further opened up about his “feeling of surpassment” upon listening to the tracks on Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city for the first time, “When Kendrick’s album dropped, the journey got harder, the mountain got steeper. Because similar to when [So Far Gone] dropped, where it was like, ‘Oh sh*t, there’s another person out there that has the same ambitions as me,’ it happened like that with Kendrick.”
Cole continued, “It was a feeling of surpassment. It was two indicators that told me. His first-week numbers were more than mine. The other thing was we had a show where we were both on the same lineup… and I went before him and he went after me.”
Listen to the full episode on the official Inevitable website.
