The escalation of the beef I think will favor Cole in the long run. It was a dope diss from K Dot but it’s also been almost 5 months since ‘First Person Shooter’ came out and even with FPS there were light,at best, digs at K Dot. Most people didn’t see it as a diss, you’d have to dig deep to see anything.
3 years ago, I would’ve easily said K Dot would win, but Cole has been on some otherworldly shit the past couple of years. Also, K Dot said on his control verse that he wanted to body rappers until nobody heard of them. The issue is that I haven’t seen that competitive edge from him when it comes to J. Cole. Maybe some light sneak disses at best. He’s recently been on a couple of tracks with J. Cole where he only does the hook.
If you’re the best, drop a verse at least. Body Cole on his own track. I don’t even think he’d have an issue with it. But Cole has been relentless with every track that’s he’s been on. There were rumors about K Dot having writers block as the reason, which might be why Cole dropped the line about being effortless in the booth in ‘Johnny P’s Caddy.’
I could be reaching but, Cole seems to be a bit more brazen about naming himself the best (even bodying Drake on FPS) because he’s been perfecting his craft and wants that #1 spot and knows that K Dot had a lot of things fall in place for him to be in that #1 spot.
If supposedly true, Cole was the one that introduced K Dot to Dr. Dre and set up everything, Then K Dot’s success was given to him by people like Cole and Drake putting him on and giving him that exposure. Now I don’t want to take away from the hype that Kendrick had as an underground artist, but without those connections at the right time we don’t get classics like GKMC and TPAB. It doesn’t take away from him, but most people in the industry seemed to be rooting for him.