J. Cole fans have always appreciated him for his authenticity in telling his own truth. As a rapper, he’s given fans an insight into his own trials and tribulations in his life as he relates that to the average person. However, it appears as though there was a time in his life when he was sick of talking about himself. 

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Cole recently joined Marshawn Lynch and Ryan Coogler in Harlem for the MLK Now Panel. Over the course of the conversation, which got into some very deep topics, Cole explained a point in his career where he was simply tired of speaking of his own life in the rap game. “The time, it was after the Forest Hill Drive album, at a time in my life where I was just tired of like, rapping about myself,” he explained. “So much of my art was storytelling from my own perspective. I’d always give you branches of someone else’s perspective but so much of it was like my personal journey, my personal growth, my personal flaws, this, that and the third. And it was a time period when I was like that was not interesting to me.”

After moving back to North Carolina from New York, he explained that he had a “whole different perspective of the landscape.” 

“That tour was a product of that album which was a product of that book and just a desire to like, ‘okay, let me use this platform to tell these stories,'” he said. Peep the clip below.