DJ Akademiks wonders what happened to J. Cole after he “lined his homie Drake to battle Kendrick,” side-stepping the rap battle himself

DJ Akademiks pondered over J. Cole’s presence after Drake’s 2024 rap battle with Kendrick Lamar, alleging that Cole “lined his homie” to “battle” Lamar while side-stepping the beef himself. For those uninformed, J. Cole was initially involved in the early stages of the rap beef between Lamar and Drake.

He was the first to release a diss track targeting Lamar after the latter’s verse in Like That in March 2024. However, days later, J. Cole apologized for the diss and deleted the song.

On September 14, 2025, Akademiks took to X to question what J. Cole was doing in recent times, writing:

“Whatever happened to dat n***a J Cole I ain’t hear s**t bout him since he started popping s**t bout wanting to battle then lined his homie Drake to battle Kendrick dolo [sic] while he side stepped the whole battle n copped all types of pleas.”

J. Cole’s most recent project was his 2024 EP, Might Delete Later. According to Complex, the rapper is reportedly working on his upcoming album, The Fall Off. While the rapper has not revealed any details about the project at the time of this article, producer DZL described the album as “top-tier raps, top-level rapping, top-level storytelling.”

Meanwhile, JID claimed that he and Cole were working on a joint album during his August 2025 appearance on The Joe Budden Podcast, saying:

“Me and Cole got a body, a 15-track smoker. Me and him, back and forth. We worked on this s**t in New York, I ain’t never told nobody this. Sorry, Cole.”

Exploring J. Cole’s involvement in the Kendrick Lamar-Drake beef

The Drake-Kendrick Lamar rap battle, which dominated the music industry for most of 2024, began after Drake released the song First Person Shooter featuring J. Cole in late 2023. In the track, Cole suggested that he, Drake, and Lamar were the “big three” in the rap industry.

In March 2024, Lamar fired back at the line in his verse on Like That, released as part of Metro Boomin and Future’s LP, We Don’t Trust You. In the track, the Compton rapper denounced the notion of the big three and claimed that there was only “big me.” He also accused Drake and J. Cole of “sneak dissing,” rapping:

“F**k sneak dissin’, first-person shooter, I hope they came with three switches/ I crash out like, “F**k rap,” diss Melle Mel if I had to/ Got 2TEEZ with me, I’m snatchin’ chains and burnin’ tattoos, it’s up/ Lost too many soldiers not to play it safe/ If he walk around with that stick, it ain’t André 3K/ Think I won’t drop the location? I still got PTSD/ Motherf**k the big three, n***a, it’s just big me.”

According to the BBC, J. Cole was the first to respond to Lamar’s diss on Like That. In April 2024, he released his EP Might Delete Later, which featured his response to Lamar in a track called 7 Minute Drill. In the diss track, Cole alleged that the Compton rapper “fell off like the Simpsons,” adding that his 2022 album, Mr Morale & the Big Steppers, was “tragic.”

However, days after the song’s release, J. Cole expressed regret for dissing Lamar during his performance at the Dreamville Festival in North Carolina. Calling the diss the “lamest, goofiest” thing he had ever done, the rapper claimed that he was pressured to respond to Lamar by fans, friends, and colleagues.

However, he added that he felt conflicted because he didn’t “really feel no way but the world wanna see blood,” so he recorded and released the diss. Furthermore, he publicly apologized to Lamar, saying:

“I just wanna come up here and publicly be like bruh, that was the lamest goofiest s**t, and I say all that to say it made me feel like 10 years ago when I was moving incorrectly, and I pray that god will line me back up on my purpose and my path.”

He continued:

“I pray that my n***a didnt feel no way and if he did, my n***a, I got my chin out, take your best shot, I’ma take that s**t on the chin, boy. Do what you do. all good. It’s love. And I pray that y’all will like, forgive a n***a for the misstep and I can get back to my true path, ’cause I ain’t gonna lie to y’all, the past two days felt terrible,” he continued.

In October 2024, J. Cole seemingly addressed his reason for bowing out of the feud in the single Port Antonio, implying that he “pulled the plug” because he knew the beef would result in him losing “a bro” and gaining “a foe.”

“I pulled the plug because I’ve seen where that was ’bout to go/ They wanted blood, they wanted clicks to make they pockets grow/ They see this fire in my pen and think I’m dodgin’ smoke/ I wouldn’t have lost a battle, dawg, I woulda lost a bro/ I woulda gained a foe, and all for what? Just to attain some mo’/ Props from strangers that don’t got a clue what I been aimin’ for?” he rapped.

In other news, Drake is gearing up for the release of his upcoming album, Iceman. While the rapper has yet to announce an exact release date, the album is expected to be released in late 2025.