{"id":115150,"date":"2026-01-28T15:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T15:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/115150\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T15:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T15:34:10","slug":"j-cole-addresses-his-apology-to-kendrick-lamar-on-bronx-zoo-freestyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/115150\/","title":{"rendered":"J. Cole Addresses His Apology To Kendrick Lamar On ‘Bronx Zoo Freestyle’"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been nearly two years since J. Cole<\/a> apologized to Kendrick Lamar<\/a> during his final Dreamville Fest performance. Now, he’s reflecting on how the decision impacted his status in the rap game. <\/p>\n

On Tuesday night, January 27, the North Carolina native shared his surprise Birthday Blizzard ’26<\/a> EP hosted by DJ Clue?<\/a> He opens the project with “Bronx Zoo Freestyle,” in which he mentions the stunning moment. <\/p>\n

“I used to be top seed\/Apology dropped me way out of the top three,” Cole raps at the end of the track. “No problem, I’m probably my best when they doubt me.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThe top ain\u2019t really what I thought it would be,” he continues. “So I jumped off and landed back at the bottom and restarted at a level where I wasn\u2019t regarded as much, just to climb past them again and tell them all to keep up.”<\/p>\n

J. Cole’s apology stemmed from his 2024 track “7 Minute Drill.”<\/a> The song appeared at the end of Cole’s Might Delete Later mixtape, which arrived shortly after Kendrick Lamar fired some shots at him on Future<\/a> & Metro Boomin’s<\/a> “Like That.” His bars wasn’t as vicious as Lamar’s was, but it was enough to make Cole take it back and remove the song from the project. <\/p>\n

“Y’all love Kendrick Lamar correct,” Cole told the crowd at Dreamville Fest in 2024. “As do I. So 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. I pray that God will line me back up on my purpose and my path.”<\/p>\n

Cole’s latest EP arrived a week before The Fall-Off is set to drop. Look out for his “final” album on February 6. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s been nearly two years since J. Cole apologized to Kendrick Lamar during his final Dreamville Fest performance.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,1123,51077,37335,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-115150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-hip-hop","10":"tag-j-cole","11":"tag-kendrick-lamar","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-the-bronx","16":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","17":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}