J. Cole Plays Unreleased Songs Featuring Kendrick Lamar on ‘Inevitable’ Podcast

J. Cole played a couple unreleased songs he recorded with Kendrick Lamar on episode four of his “audio series” podcast Inevitable.

The songs, “Shock the World” and “Temptation” are from 2010 around the time both flirted with recording a joint album together. Cole went into detail about those early collaborations. According to Cole, the two previously met during a XXL Freshman cover shoot that featured both the North Carolina rapper and TDE’s Jay Rock. The two stayed in touch and J. Cole eventually sent him some beats. “When I dropped ‘Blow Up,’ I remember him hitting me like, ‘N—a, I need one of those!’ He was talking about how crazy the beat was,” he said. “When I was out in L.A., he came by No I.D.‘s studio and I linked with him… I played him the beat for ‘HiiiPoWeR,’ I played him ‘Temptation’ with my verse on it, I played him a couple of other joints that had one verse on it.”

Adding, “When I played them for him, I was like, ‘Bro, you can have these if you want.’ I remember he said — and it always stuck with me ’cause I had never heard nobody say this to me before — he was looking at me like, ‘N—a, are you sure you want to give me these?!’ “I’m like, ‘Yeah, go ahead, take them.’ He was like, ‘Bro, you sleeping on yourself.’ It struck me because it was actually the stone cold truth of my reality at that time. I was so focused on getting this unicorn hit for my album that I was actually sleeping on the shit that I did well.”

Kendrick once played the songs for fans during a meet and greet back in the day.

In other Cole news, he announced that Dreamville Fest will be celebrating its fifth anniversary in 2025 with presale tickets going sale on Dec. 11 at 9 a.m. ET.

You can check out Inevitable here.