J. Cole has been quiet doing J. Cole Things—biking around New York City, making beats on the beach, being quietly super rich—since WWI popped off earlier this spring, save for a few features that were probably already in the chamber, but it was only a matter of time before he took to his own track to say his piece on the whole thing. That’s what we finally got out of the blue tonight with “Port Antonio,” a quintessential Cole song: a moody beat, likely produced by Cole himself and sampling classic ’90s rap (“Dead Presidents”), laidback flow and exquisitely crafted, contemplative bars.
Cole spends the first part of “Port Antonio” reflecting on far he’s come from the rough upbringing that he muses on often; the headline-raps are stashed for the last half of the last verse, and they do not disappoint. He starts off addressing the widespread debate that bowing out of the Drake-Kendrick fracas has lowered his standing, rapping that he’s “smirkin at n-ggas tryin to besmirch” his name and “They see this fire in my pen and think I’m dodging smoke.”
From there he says what he more or less said during his infamous on-stage retraction: “I wouldn’t have lost a battle, dog, I would’ve lost a bro/I would’ve gained a foe/And all for what?/Just to attain more props from strangers who don’t know what I been aimin for?”
Cole goes on to snidely comment on all the ancillary shenanigans that quickly took the beef beyond a mere battle to decide who’s the best, and invited in mudslinging, social media pundits pushing narratives, and bots to drive popularity. And from the way it all played out, he seems even more confident in his decision to stay out of it: “Lines got crossed, perhaps regrettably/My friends went to war, I walked away with all they blood on me/Now some will discredit me, try to wipe away my pedigree/But please, find a n-gga out that’s rappin this incredibly/My dawg texted me, I’ll share the words he said to me/’If you refuse to shoot a gun, don’t mean the gun ain’t deadly’/I guess in that metaphor, hypothetically the gun is me/I text him back like: ‘I guess a gun ain’t what I’m tryna be.’”
