Exhale, Dreamville. J. Cole spent years hinting that The Fall-Off could be his last album, and now he’s officially walking that back.
In a new GQ conversation alongside his longtime A&R and mentor Mark Pitts, the North Carolina MC made it plain that retirement is no longer the plan. “I’m not using that word,” Cole said, per XXL and Billboard.
From “Final Album” to “Not So Fast”
Cole has said he made The Fall-Off believing it might be his final project. The double-disc album arrived in February and gave him his seventh No. 1 on the Billboard 200, according to Billboard, and the sold-out arena tour that followed clearly shifted his thinking.
He isn’t announcing a new album yet. Instead, XXL reports, his focus right now is The Fall-Off World Tour, his family and producing more music. Translation: the door is open, and Cole isn’t putting a lock on it.
Revisiting the Kendrick Moment
The sit-down also took fans back to spring 2024. After Kendrick Lamar took aim at Cole and Drake on Future’s “Like That,” Cole answered with “7 Minute Drill,” then publicly apologized days later and bowed out of the feud at his Dreamville Festival. The track was later pulled from streaming.
Cole told GQ he felt pressure to “respond without responding,” Billboard reports, while also still holding a Kendrick verse for his own album. He revealed he’d planned two Kendrick features for The Fall-Off but scrapped them after they leaked.
The Jay-Z and Mark Pitts Connection
Cole also credited Jay-Z with giving him room to find himself, saying the pressure to deliver commercially ultimately helped him grow. He recalled struggling mentally before 2013’s Born Sinner because he felt he wasn’t meeting his own standards.
Pitts, who was the first label executive to notice Cole in the late 2000s, reportedly decided Jive Records wasn’t the right fit for him and sent his music to Jay-Z instead, leading to Cole’s Roc Nation deal. Pitts stepped down as president of RCA Records in April to launch COFVNDERS, a multimedia management company whose first major project is Chris Brown and Usher’s R&B Tour, per XXL. Speaking of Hov, catch up on Jay-Z’s official Super Bowl LXI halftime news.
Why it matters: Cole is one of the last superstar rappers whose every album still feels like an event, and he’s built a deep, loyal fan base across the South. Knowing he’s not done means the Dreamville era still has more chapters, and the “Big Three” conversation isn’t closing anytime soon.
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Sources: XXL, Billboard, HotNewHipHop
