J. Cole set the record straight about his retirement plans, while also opening up about the pressure Jaÿ-Z put on him early in his career, what’s next and more in a new interview alongside his longtime A&R, Mark Pitts, for GQ.
On Wednesday (Oct. 28), Cole and Pitts sat down for an hour-long conversation with GQ‘s Frazier Thorpe about their history together as well as their respective career journeys. As soon as the interview started, Cole passionately shared how selfless Pitts was as the first record exec to take notice of him in the late 2000s. Instead of signing Cole to Jive Records, where Pitts worked at the time, Cole explained that Pitts knew Jive wouldn’t be the best fit. Instead, he got Cole’s music to Hov a few months later and the rest was history.
From Jive, Pitts later moved over to RCA Records where he served as president. And in April, he stepped down from the label to launch his multi-media management company, Cofvnders. The first big project was Chris Brown and Usher’s R&B Tour, which the guys were all in Vegas for the night of the interview–something Cole was quite excited about attending before his own tour stop in Vegas the next night.
Elsewhere in the interview, Cole addressed speculation about his retirement after previously suggesting The Fall-Off could be his final album. However, the rapper made it clear he’s not ready to put a definitive end date on his music career.
“I’m not using [the word retirement] at all. No, no. I’m not using that word,” Cole said. “But I was saying that I made The Fall-Off with intentions to. Like when I was making that album, I was making it like, ‘Damn, this is gonna be my last shit.’ Luckily, by the time I got to actually finishing the album, it’s like, oh nah. Nah, I’ll never say I’ma retire. I don’t know when the next thing is gonna happen but I’m definitely not gonna say no.”
As for what’s next, Cole said he’s primarily focused on his ongoing The Fall-Off World Tour and spending more time with his family. But he also expressed interest in getting back to producing more music.
And while revisiting the pressure Jaÿ-Z placed on him early in his career after signing to Roc Nation, Cole acknowledged that while he sometimes blamed the label’s expectations for not meeting his own creative goals, he now understands how much that pressure helped him grow.
“[Jaÿ-Z] gave me [the space to find myself], one hundred percent. Thank God. He also had, I think, expectations and hopes of what I would do and that pressure was spilling on me, but guess what? That was helpful too,” Cole said.
The rapper recalled struggling mentally in the period leading up to his 2013 album Born Sinner, when he felt he wasn’t living up to his own expectations. Looking back, however, he recognizes that the pressure to deliver commercially helped him become the artist he is today.
“Now that I’m older and I realize how the world works, I’m like no, he helped you,” Cole continued. “Like thank God he absolutely gave me all the space to grow as an artist and the pressure that he did put on me in terms of a single and [all that]. I needed it. Ni**a, he made a diamond. I would not have been able to become who I am today and where I ended up getting to had he not.”
Check out the interview in full below.
Watch J. Cole Talk Retirement, Jaÿ-Z and More With Mark Pitts for GQ
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