Kanye West made a surprise appearance during the April 29, 2025, livestream f Sneako and Neon, where he expressed his thoughts on the music of rappers J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar.
“People say they like, I don’t know if y’all like J. Cole rap. Just do not tell me that, cuz I don’t want to like differently and sh*t. But, but, it’s like, I hate J. Cole, it can’t even be called music. I hate J. Cole, what he does, bro. I hate the people that sign J. Cole, you know?” Ye stated.
The Yeezy founder stated that record labels should stop “pushing” The Come Up rapper, adding that J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar remind him of one another.
“I saw this sh*t with Ben Affleck saying that Kendrick is one of his favorite rappers? I was like, bro, anybody that has Kendrick as one of their favorite rappers don’t know about rap, doesn’t know we are real,” Kanye noted.
Elsewhere, Ye mentioned that if he ever meets Drake, he would ask him why he was working with J. Cole, as he was “not even a human” or an “actual person.” When asked whether Kanye was “preaching about the beef” between Kanye and Drake, Kanye indirectly hinted that one of his favorite lyrics was when Drake dissed K-Dot.
Kanye previously made similar comments about J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar
On April 1, 2025, Ye revisited his 2022 tweet featuring his track, Johnny P’s Caddy, and wrote in its comment sections that he hates J. Cole’s music, also expressing his disapproval of Kendrick Lamar.
“I hate J. Cole music so much. It’s like between Kendrick and Cole, I bet you industry plants asked Cole to diss Drake, then we would have been accosted with a Cole Super Bowl commercial with no SZA song to save it,” Ye wrote back then.
At the time, the Donda 2 artist also posted, “No one listens to Cole after losing their virginity,” in a follow-up comment and added that he discussed J. Cole with Drake years ago after they ended their feud.
“When I met up with Drake during Donda, most of the convo was me telling him he was hurting hip hop by giving J Cole a platform, and I was saying how much I loved Future,” Kanye further wrote.
While Kendrick Lamar continued to maintain his silence, J. Cole responded to Ye’s diss. During his April 7, 2025, performance at the Dreamville Festival, Cole gave a shoutout to Kanye for allowing him to use samples from his single Work Out, which is from his debut album, Cole World: The Sideline Story.
“I know n***as feel a way about him right now, but I got love for [Ye] and I really appreciate him. He cleared all these f**king samples for me,” the 40-year-old said.
J. Cole also mentioned that he listened to Ye’s 2004 song, The New Workout Plan, which inspired him and gave him a new perspective.
“I ran back to the other room. It’s like it spoke to me,” he added.
This is not the first time Ye has beefed with J. Cole. Cole dissed West in his 2016 single, False Prophets and the 2019 song, Middle Child. West, in turn, dissed him back in his 2024 unauthorized remix of Kendrick Lamar, Future, and Metro Boomin’s song, Like That. The track also had shots directed at Drake.
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Edited by Shreya Das
