J. Cole celebrated his 41st birthday with a gift for the fans, which came in the form of a surprise Birthday Blizzard ’26 four-pack of freestyles hosted by DJ Clue.
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Fans’ ears perked up when they heard what appeared to be Cole addressing his apology to Kendrick Lamar on “Bronx Zoo Freestyle.”
“I used to be top, see, the apology dropped me way out of the top three, no problem, I’m probably my best when they doubt me,” Cole raps. “The top ain’t really what I thought it would be, so I jumped off and landed back at the bottom and restarted at a level where I wasn’t regarded as much, just to climb past them again and tell them all to keep up.”
The North Carolina rapper dissed K. Dot on 2024’s “7 Minute Drill,” but decided to erase the Might Delete Later mixtape cut from streaming services days later and apologized to Lamar on stage at his Dreamville Festival.
“I’m so proud of that project, except for one part,” he said on stage at Dreamville Fest in 2024. “Y’all love Kendrick Lamar, correct? As do I. So I just wanna come up here and publicly be like bruh, that was the lamest, goofiest s—t, and I say all that to say it made me feel like 10 years ago when I was moving incorrectly, and I pray that God will line me back up on my purpose and my path, I pray that my n—a didn’t feel no way.”
He continued: “And if he did, my n—a, I got my chin out, take your best shot, I’ma take that s–t on the chin, boy. Do what you do. All good. It’s love!”
The apology allowed Cole to sidestep a potential feud with Kendrick, which led to the Compton rapper and Drake battling in April-May of 2024.
The four-track Birthday Blizzard ’26 serves as a warm-up for Cole heading into his The Fall-Off album, which has been speculated as his final LP and is slated to arrive on Feb. 6.
The Dreamville rapper set the table for The Fall-Off with his “Disc 2 Track 2” single, which saw him rap his life’s story in reverse.
It’s been nearly five years since Cole’s last album, The Off-Season, which was released in May 2021. It topped the Billboard 200 with 282,000 total album-equivalent units earned.
