The North Carolina rap artist, J. Cole, posted his thoughts on the Kanye West documentary ‘Jeen-Yuhs’ on Instagram.
Dreamville artist, J. Cole, has had a long and complicated relationship with Kanye West that dates all the way back to 2007. On Cole’s debut mixtape The Come Up four tracks were produced by West, marking the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between the two that would eventually take its twists and turns. In 2009’s The Warm Up, Cole’s second project, he gave nods to Kanye with his lyrics as well as having more Kanye-produced beats on the tape.
J. Cole would go on to sign with Roc Nation in 2009, the same Jay-Z label that signed Kanye West. This cam in conjunction with Cole’s feature on ‘A Star is Born,’ which was on Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 and produced by Ye.
Cole would go on to feature in Kanye’s G.O.O.D. Friday song ‘Looking For Trouble’ and continued to be inspired by West’s beats— sampling ‘The New Workout Plan’ on his hit single ‘Work Out.’ After this point, their relationship slowly became more contentious, marked by J. Cole moving his album Born Sinner up specifically to compete with Ye’s album Yeezus.
The subtle contention between the two would only continue with songs such as ‘False Prophets’ referring to Kanye, interviews that brought out the rappers’ feelings towards one another, and Twitter beefs over leaked phone calls.
Now, with the release of the Kanye West documentary, Jeen-Yuhs, it looks like J. Cole is in appreciation of Ye’s story to the degree that he is inspired. This seems to be a potential extending of the olive branch from the Dreamville artist and a show of love to someone who inspired him from the very start. After all, the first episode of Jeen-Yuhs does show us a look at the beginnings of West’s career, back to a time when Cole had nothing but love for the rapper-producer.
Wale, another rapper Cole had beef with over the song ‘False Prophets’ also showed love for the Ye doc, giving a feeling that it may be bringing the rap community closer together.
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That Kanye Documentary was amazing it felt like jumpin in a time machine
— Wale (@Wale) February 16, 2022