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J. Cole Opens up About the Pressure He Felt As Jay-Z’s Protégé: ‘I Wanna Be LeBron and Not Kwame!’

J. Cole opens up in a throwback interview about the ‘good pressure’ he felt signing under Jay-Z and his Roc Nation label.

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Signing under Jay-Z brought a ton of pressure to J. Cole. Considering Hov is largely considered the greatest rapper of all time to a lot of fans, it’s hard to reach that bar. Whenever he would sign someone, it was always expected that they would be comparable to one of Brooklyn’s finest. Past artists under Roc-a-Fella may have been formidable on their own. However, they never quite met the standard Jay always set for himself.

Consequently, when Jay-Z ushered in a new era of Roc Nation with J. Cole on board, the stakes were high. Even Cole himself admitted he was anxious about taking on the task. During a 2009 interview with DJBooth, he kept the Roc’s past roster in mind when deciding to sign. Ultimately, though, he liked the potential challenge.

“I truly believe that you determine your own destiny. An opportunity is an opportunity, and one of that magnitude would be dumb to pass up, especially when I truly believe that I make my path and I set my course, and where I land, at the end of the day, or the end of my career, [is] because of me. Of course, you get help along the way, and cosigns and management and opportunities and things like that, but overall, the ball is in your court basically,” Cole told the publication.

J. Cole Wanted The ‘Good Pressure’ That Came with being Jay-Z’s Protégé

Given Cole’s penchant for basketball, he was compared to a highly touted prospect, proving why they were drafted with the first pick. “I feel the type of pressure that a strong-minded first pick in a draft would feel. ‘Cause I feel like the first pick in a draft could either be like, ‘Damn, I’m the first pick! I don’t wanna mess up! I don’t wanna f*ck this up, they invested a lot of money in me!’” J. Cole explained. “Or he could be like, ‘Yeah, I’m the first round pick, ‘cause I worked so hard to be the first round pick. Now I’m gonna show you why I’m the first pick.’

In his quest to be “LeBron and not Kwame [Brown]”, Cole looked at his feature on Jay-Z’s “A Star is Born” as a coronation into hip-hop stardom. “I’m hoping, 10 years from now, when they do the Behind the Music, or whatever they’re doin’, the biography, that’ll be the perfect setup to start the story. That’ll be like the generic J. Cole setup: ‘It all started with ‘A Star is Born,’” J. Cole quipped. “That sounds like some destiny sh*t. Now, if I pull a Kwame Brown it’ll be super ironic, but if I pull a LeBron James, it’s too good of a setup, [for that] to be my first feature.”

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