J. Cole is a certified hitmaker.
But it wasn’t always that way.
On Cole’s podcast, Cole and his manager Ibrahim “Ib” Hamad discussed attending LeBron James and JAY-Z’s Two Kings dinner during the 2011 NBA All-Star Game weekend, months before Cole dropped his debut album.
During the meal, Hov told Drake to give Cole a hit.
“We’re having a conversation. Me, Cole, Drake, Future The Prince,” Hamad remembered. “I don’t know who else, but there were a couple more people. So then Jay walks in and he sees all of us together. He goes, ‘Yo!’ and he looks at Drake and he says, ‘Yo, give the boy one’ … ” points at Cole like, basically, ‘Give him a hit.’ We’re all like, ‘What?’ I even remember Future’s face being like, ‘That’s embarrassing.'”
Later in the evening Cole found Hov and reminded him that his debut album, 1996 Reasonable Doubt, didn’t have any huge hits on it.