On May 20th, Top Dawg Entertainment President, Terrence “Punch” Henderson Jr., gave a little insight towards a Kendrick Lamar and
J. Cole collaborative album. Through a series of tweets, Punch shot down rumors of the idea, but also showed that he has wanted it for a long time and has done what he can to make it happen.
When twitter users mentioned the thought of the album, he began by responding with, “Not happening”, but was quickly taken back by all the excitement around it and ended up saying, “Nah I don’t know. It might still happen. I want it to happen,” … “Y’all really want that album still??? Like for real? I think it would [be] great for Hip Hop. I did my part though. I spoke to both of them. Hit them n*ggas!”.
Since the release of Kendrick and Cole’s “Black Friday” song in 2015, fans have basically been begging for the two to sit down and make a masterpiece. They are, and have been, good friends outside of the studio and their ability to collaborate together was highlighted in the song when they both spit over each other’s beats. Kendrick absolutely murdered J. Cole’s “Tale of Two Cities” instrumental, and Cole brought new flows and melodies to Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright”.

Fellow Top Dawg artist Ab-Soul spoke to this in 2016 saying, “They got something in the works. They’ve been working on that motherf*cker for a while.” Four years later we are still waiting on the project, but the hype has only gotten bigger. J. Cole seems to be busy with taking his Dreamville team to the top by dropping “Revenge of the Dreamers III”, but it’s been a minute since Kendrick published a project, as the ‘Black Panther’ soundtrack came out in 2018. If they really are working to get this dropped, the Hip Hop community is going to get something that redefines the entire culture.