J. Cole Addresses Kendrick Lamar & Drake Beef On New Song ‘Port Antonio’

Photo by Astrida Valigorsky/WireImage

J. Cole has unexpectedly addressed the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, as well as his decision to bow out of it, on a new song called “Port Antonio.”

Released by surprise on Wednesday night (October 9), the five-minute track finds the Dreamville rapper defending his decision to step back from his brief battle with longtime friend and occasional collaborator Kendrick.

“I pulled the plug because I 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,” he raps.

Cole then references the salacious accusations made by both Drake and Kendrick on their respective diss songs: “Jermaine is no king if that means I gotta dig up dirt and pay the whole team / Of algorithm bot n-ggas just to sway the whole thing / On social media, competing for your favorable memes to be considered best.”

He also suggests that both rappers went too far in their feud: “I understand the thirst of being first that made ’em both swing / Protecting legacies, so lines got crossed, perhaps regrettably / My friends went to war, I walked away with all they blood on me.”

Cole later addresses his “First Person Shooter” collaborator directly: “They say I’m pickin’ sides, aye, don’t you lie on me, my n-gga / To start another war / Aye, Drake, you’ll always be my n-gga / I ain’t ashamed to say you did a lot for me, my n-gga / Fuck all the narratives / Tapping back into your magic pen is what’s imperative.”

The North Carolina native closes out the song by making a wider plea to Hip Hop: “Reminding these folks why we do it / It’s not for beefing, it’s for speaking our thoughts / Pushing ourselves, reaching the charts / Reaching your minds, deep in your heart / Screaming to find emotions to touch / Somethin’ inside to open you up / Help you cope with the rough times and shit / I’m sending love, ’cause we ain’t promised shit.”

Away from the headline-grabbing bars about his “Big Three” contemporaries, “Port Antonio” samples Lonnie Liston Smith’s “A Garden of Peace,” which rap heads will recognize from JAY-Z‘s “Dead Presidents,” as well as Cleo Sol‘s “Know That You Are Loved,” which was also recently sampled by Big Sean on “Boundaries.”