J. Cole was once brushed off by Eminem‘s longtime manager Paul Rosenberg before he became the superstar he is today.
Cole just launched a podcast series titled Inevitable, which is comprised of conversations with his manager Ibrahim Hamad and filmmaker Scott Lazer.
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On a recent episode, Ib and Cole recalled the major meetings they’d starting getting in the late 2000s. While most weren’t panning out, to Cole, they were indicative of the momentum he’d finally gained.
“After that meeting [with G-Unit], we got a meeting with two people: one was Chris Lighty and the other was – I think Sha [Money XL] had something to do with this – he got us a meeting with Paul Rosenberg who is Eminem’s manager forever and runs Shady Records,” Cole said. “Just like being at 50’s house and meeting Mark Pitts, it was, ‘Now we’re talking momentum.’ Just a year prior, I was fucking waiting outside on some Hail Mary shit for JAY-Z, and now I’m getting real momentum of people calling like, ‘They want to come and see us, they want us to pull up and play music.’”
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Ib added: “I remember at the Paul Rosenberg meeting, ’cause I was there for that, it really felt like he was doing someone a favor.”
Cole replied, “Chris Lighty’s energy was more like, ‘Yo, I’m just gonna give y’all some game. Y’all young n-ggas I heard about, boom boom boom.’ And Paul Rosenberg genuinely felt like he was disinterested and didn’t give a fuck. It literally felt like it was a favor. There was no vibe to that meeting, he didn’t see it, he didn’t get it. Which is cool, he didn’t play us at all.”
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“Even when we came into the meeting it was almost like, ’I got a meeting I gotta knock out real quick. Let’s just do this.’” Ib mentioned.
“But, once again I didn’t give a fuck because it was momentum,” Cole noted. “The fact that I was right there with Eminem’s fucking manager and somehow I made it to him and on his fucking radar was just more proof of, ‘Yo, just keep doing what you’re fucking doing.’”
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You can listen to the full episodes here.
Of course, J. Cole would go on to sign with JAY-Z’s Roc Nation imprint and become the star he is today – who even Eminem is a fan of.
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On Em’s “Doomsday Pt. 2,” released earlier this year on the Lyrical Lemonade compilation album All Is Yellow, the Detroit rapper shouts out Cole World alongside Lyrical Lemonade founder Cole Bennett.
“And that’s why I’m back with Cole Bennett/ And I been at the level J. Cole been at,” he raps.
Ib was thrilled with the reference, writing on X: “That’s fire.”
The nod is notable because a decade ago, J. Cole took a small swipe at Eminem on the song “Fire Squad,” comparing him to Elvis as a white man who “stole the sound” of a Black genre.
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Cole said at the end of the track that he was joking around, but that “all good jokes contain true shit.”
