J. Cole has revealed that he had a “divine” encounter with Nas where he played the Queensbridge rap legend his song “Let Nas Down” before it came out.
During the latest episode of his Inevitable audio series, the Dreamville rapper recalled playing the track for his longtime manager Ibraham “Ib” Hamad at an airport in Houston, just days after recording it.
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When Ib finished listening to the song, he looked up and was left picking up his jaw off the floor when he saw none other than Nas stood just meters away.
“He gives me the headphones back, and all of a sudden this n-gga Ib is like, ‘No way,'” Cole remembered. “I said, ‘What?’ He’s like, ‘Yo, this n-gga Nas is right there!’ He was boarding the flight […] I was like, ‘Get the fuck out of here!’
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“Right in that moment, I was like, This is some divine shit. This is ridiculous, bro. I don’t believe in coincidences. I was like, This is a sign from God like, ‘Keep on your path, stick with it.’ Mind you, I’ve never met Nas before.”
Making the encounter even eerier is the fact that Nas’ seat was in the row behind J. Cole’s. Needless to say, the Roc Nation rookie seized the opportunity.
“I got on the plane and I was like, ‘I have to play him this song. I’m supposed to play him this song,'” he said.
“I say what’s up to him and I’m like, ‘Bro, I know this is gonna sound fucking insane. I just made this song fucking two days ago. I can’t even explain to you how crazy it is that I’m seeing you right now, randomly on this flight. But I have to play you this song.’
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“He was like, ‘Alright, no doubt.’ Which, in retrospect, has to feel kind of nuts. But then I handed him the headphones and I played him ‘Let Nas Down.'”
Cole, who at the time was working on his sophomore album Born Sinner, admitted that he has no recollection of Nas’ reaction or how their conversation went after he heard the song.
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“I have no idea what he said [laughs] and now, looking back, I have no idea how he felt or how I expected him to feel,” he continued. “All I knew was, ‘You’re right here. This is God.’
“I’m sure he was on some shit like, ‘Yo, that’s dope.’ I don’t remember us having a conversation about the song. But it’s just nuts that I even played it for him, that raw after it was done.”
Released in 2013, “Let Nas Down” found J. Cole unpacking his disappointment after being told that Nas, one of his Hip Hop heroes, “hated” his Cole World: The Sideline Story single “Work Out.”
Though Cole said he viewed the somewhat divisive song as “harmless” at the time, he admitted that he has mixed feelings about it more than a decade later.
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“Two days ago I was working out in the gym and somebody had this song in their playlist,” he explained. “And in the context of this conversation we’ve been having, I was like, ‘Oh shit [laughs].’ I heard it differently.”
Despite Cole’s foggy memory, Nas reacted positively to “Let Nas Down,” writing on Twitter following its release: “You made me proud man.”
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The two rappers would later team up on a remix of the track, aptly renamed “Made Nas Proud.”
