Complex hooked up with J.Cole to talk about his appearance on Blueprint 3, how it came about, seeing Jay in the studio, his writing process amongst other things. The guys at Complex did a great job, one of the best interviews I have read in a long time, below is a taster;

Complex: What was your process for writing the verse?

J. Cole: I’ll tell you this: the first five to ten minutes was spent with me trying to clear my mind, because 90 percent of my thoughts was like, I’m in the studio with Jay-Z. He’s sitting on the couch watching me write, watching my process. He was trying to act like he wasn’t watching. He was on his laptop, threw his headphones on, but his head was boppin’ to the studio beat, so it was like, “You not foolin’ me!” So I’m half like, Oh shit, this nigga’s watching me, analyzing my process, maybe trying to see how I’m working, and the other side was trying to think of lines. So after the first ten minutes, once I was like, “Yo, nigga, get to work!” that’s when it all started to flow. I really just tried to have to have faith in myself. I didn’t  race in or nothing like that. Whatever I put on the page was pretty much what i ended up saying. And I thought it was ill, but it wasn’t until the last line, when i was like, “The flow cold as the shoulders of gold diggin’ hoes when a broke nigga approaches”… when the line came to my head, it was almost like, that doesn’t rhyme that well, that scenario can’t really rhyme that well! I was as confident as i could be in a verse, given the circumstances.

Complex: Did you feel any pressure to follow the model Jay laid down with his verses?

J. Cole: Nah, because I didn’t have nothing to do with that. I’ve seen no stars, I’ve seen no stars [laughs]. All I felt was the necessity to, cause the beat is fast, so a sixteen on that kind of beat don’t really last that long. So i was like OK, if I only got 16 bars, I want to tell as much of my story as possible. So I definitely wanted to shout out the ’Ville and let people know that i came up. I didn’t want to just come on with a bunch of punchlines for no reason. I wanted to give them my story if i could.

Complex: Did Hov say anything to you about the verse?

J. Cole: He just asked me how i was feeling and i just told him thank you. That’s it.

Read the full interview Here

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Posted by Roy