J. Cole’s “False Prophets” Appears To Be A Kanye West Diss
Yesterday, we learned that J. Cole is probably going to release a new album called 4 Your Eyez Only next week. And last night, Cole shared a new 40-minute documentary called Eyez, which follows him as he hits the studio and goes to work with producers and musicians, openly wondering how he’s going to give his music the feeling he wants. (It’s a Tidal video, but you don’t have to be a Tidal subscriber to watch it.) The doc also includes a few pieces of new music, including, at the 30:40 mark, a video for a new song called “False Prophets” that really, really seems to be about Kanye West.
As Miss Info points out, the whole first verse of “False Prophets” seems to be one extended riff on West — one that shows a little empathy but mostly just calls him out for feeling his own shit too much. Given that West just spent a week in a psychiatric hospital, Cole’s timing honestly couldn’t be worse, but it’s not like he pulled it. Here’s what he says:
Ego in charge of every move, he’s a star / And we can’t look away due to the days that he caught our hearts / He’s falling apart, but we deny it / Justifying that half-assed shit that he dropped, we always buy it / When he tell us he a genius but it’s clearer lately / It’s been hard for him to look into the mirror lately / There was a time when this nigga was my hero, maybe / That’s the reason why his fall from grace is hard to take / Cuz I believed him when he said his shit was pure, and he / The type of nigga swear he real but all around him’s fake / The women, the dickriders, you know, the yes-men / Nobody with the balls to say something to contest him / So he grows out of control / Into the person that he truly was all along, it’s starting to show / Damn, wonder what happened / Maybe it’s my fault for idolizing niggas based off the words they be rapping.
There might also be a few lines about Drake in there; Cole takes aim at rappers not writing their own words and biting bubbling-up styles. In the video, we see Cole wandering city streets, riding buses and shopping in bodegas. Here’s a clip of it:
J.Cole's new song "False Prophets" (Be Like This) 🔥🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/P14OlfnB1M
— J.Cole (@OnlyJCole) December 2, 2016
The documentary also includes a similar video for a song called “Everybody Dies,” in which Cole calls out some other unnamed rappers with lines like these: “The streets don’t fuck with you, you Pitchfork rappers / Chosen by the white man, you hip-stor rappers.”
You can watch the full documentary here; the “False Prophets” video starts at the 30:40 mark.