Dec. 9 marks a decade since the release of J. Cole’s hip-hop favorite 2014 Forest Hills Drive. To celebrate, the rapper announced an anniversary show at New York’s Madison Square Garden, taking place next month. Tickets go on sale Wednesday.
Earlier this week, J. Cole also previewed unreleased collaborations with Kendrick Lamar on his Inevitable podcast. “Shock The World” and “Temptation” are from 2010, and he explained:
When I dropped “Blow Up,” I remember him hitting me like, “N***a, I need one of those!” He was talking about how crazy the beat was. When I was out in L.A., he came by No I.D.’s studio and I linked with him… I played him the beat for “HiiiPoWeR,” I played him “Temptation” with my verse on it, I played him a couple of other joints that had one verse on it.
When I played them for him, I was like, “Bro, you can have these if you want.” I remember he said — and it always stuck with me ’cause I had never heard nobody say this to me before — he was looking at me like, “N***a, are you sure you want to give me these?!” I’m like, “Yeah, go ahead, take them.” He was like, “Bro, you sleeping on yourself.” It struck me because it was actually the stone cold truth of my reality at that time. I was so focused on getting this unicorn hit for my album that I was actually sleeping on the shit that I did well.
Find his podcast here.