J. Cole is hip-hop's flavor of the moment thanks to his well-received new album, 2014 Forest Hills Drive. But one song in particular ("Fire Squad") has created controversy in the hip-hop community thanks to a line about Eminem and other white artists hijacking the art form.
We wrote about this on Tuesday, and J gave a response to Power 105's Angie Martinez this morning (Dec. 12).
"It's silly how big of an Eminem fan I am," he said. "There's a very select group of top notch people that I worship; Eminem was literally at the top of that list. My first song [sounds] like an Eminem bite. If you think I'm dissing Eminem, I know you just read the headline and you're not listening to the song.
"That has nothing to do with dissing Eminem or dissing any of those people. That part of the verse is an observation, me making an observation of culture right now, what's happening."
The offending verse goes as follows: "History repeats itself and that's just how it goes / Same way that these rappers always bite each other's flows / Same thing that my n---a Elvis did with rock 'n' roll / Justin Timberlake, Eminem and then Macklemore."
Em addressed this issue in a roundabout way several times during the early years of his career, "White America" being a primary example. And J wanted to clarify that he meant no ill will toward Slim.
He was inspired to write those lines after visiting the iTunes Jazz page, and realizing that an overwhelming majority of the artists were white.
"It's fine; anybody could do whatever music they want, it's art," he added. "Jazz is a black form of music in its origins. And not only is it a black form of music, it was the hip-hop of its day. It was that much of a rebellious music."
But the realization was soon personal.
"It hit me," Cole said. "This is the point in time where you see that switch in hip-hop.
"It's not Iggy Azalea's fault. It's not Eminem's fault. And I don't want to put Eminem in a category with anybody in terms of skill level. What I'm saying is, there comes a time when the system realizes that, I can sell this white person a lot easier - it's no conscious person."
Cole even predicted a seismic shift in the genre over the next few decades.
"I fast forward 20, 30 years from now, and I see hip-hop being completely white," he said.
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