J. Cole Publicly Apologizes to Kendrick Lamar for Dissing Him and Bows Out of the Beef

The direct K. Dot shots come on “7 Minute Drill,” the last track on Might Delete Later, a 12-track mixtape Cole surprise-dropped last night. Cole’s been teasing Might Delete Later since February, with the temperature being that it’s a sort of warm-up for The Fall Off, the self-mythologized classic album he’s been working on for years now.

“7 Minute Drill” kicks off with an urgent, ominous beat from frequent Drake and Cole collaborator T-Minus before switching up to a grimy throwback vibe courtesy of Griselda favorite Conductor Williams. Most of the Kendrick bars are in the T-Minus section, where Cole kicks the disrespect off by alleging Kendrick “fell off like The Simpsons,” going so far as to call his last album Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers “tragic.” Cole’s best jabs come when he leans right into the heart of the debates rap fans often have over Kendrick: that To Pimp a Butterfly is overrated, that K. Dot only stays in the conversation off of moments like “Control” and “Like That” (“Boy I got here off bars, not no controversy”; “If he wasn’t dissin’ then we wouldn’t be discussin him”) and that he doesn’t release music often enough to really be the numero u-n-o (“He averagin’ one hard verse like every 30 months or somethin;” “Four albums in 12 years, n-gga I can divide”).

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Those last two lines are interpolations from Cole’s former label boss Jay-Z’s “Takeover,” a scathing, indelibly disrespectful diss track that’s in the running for best-ever example of the form. Cole’s song… is not that. And he admits as much, comparing the situation to the ever relevant New Jack City meme that shows Wesley Snipes crying tears of regret as he’s about to blast his man—he even ends the track literally calling it a “warning shot,” but vowing that he’s ready to take it there if that’s what K. Dot really wants.