Royce Da 5’9″ has claimed that J. Cole is the “only competitive” rapper active today.
Appearing on his old Slaughterhouse groupmate Joe Budden’s podcast, Royce was asked about the state of the rap game.
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The “Rock City” rapper answered: “I haven’t taken a real deep look out into the landscape but from where I’m sitting it looks like J. Cole the only one being competitive. He’s the only one who’s rapping with the kind of conviction that says I still value the number one spot as a lyricist.
“I see a lot of the younger generations not really hanging their hat on just the lyrical part of creativity at all. They’re finding different ways to impact and resonate with people which is fine.”
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“That’s when the elder statesmen like myself start learning,” he continued. “I wanna make myself understand why is this touching people like that. I can’t even understand what they’re saying.
“It’s definitely moving away from lyricism being the caveat, which I’m cool with ’cause there’s a lot more things I can do without being lyrical-lyrical.”
Watch his comments at the 2:35:17 mark below.
Royce Da 5’9″‘s sentiment was recently echoed by Joe Budden himself who put J. Cole at number one over his “Big Three” peers Drake and Kendrick Lamar.
“I got Cole as my one,” he said. “I’m hoping that Kendrick’s next album could try to fix that for me. Drake is doing his Chuck E. Cheese shit. Good for him. That’s it now. Yeah, that’s it.”
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Looking ahead to Cole’s upcoming album, he said: “When I heard The Fall Off and with him hinting at maybe retirement, I thought that would be the marriage between concept and title.
“But after watching some of these vlog clips where he’s just in the restaurant talking to the older lady that doesn’t know who he is. Classic J. Cole. Perfect rollout shit again. This n-gga’s the best at this.”
“Ready to talk about EarthGang now? Matter of fact…The WHOLE Dreamville …They ready for the Zombie Apocalypse out this bitch,” Royce wrote in 2022 following the release of the crew’s D-Day: A Gangsta Grillz Mixtape.
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“Cole as an Executive separates him from that 3 headed monster convo y’all been having for the last 10 yrs… Put some respek on my brother’s name.”
