J. Cole Reveals He Told Dr. Dre to Sign Kendrick Lamar

In a recent Nardwuar interview, J. Cole revealed that he told Dr. Dre to sign Kendrick Lamar. “The Human Serviette” caught up with Cole at Day N Vegas earlier this year for an in-depth chat.

Surprising the Fayetteville rapper, Nardwuar asked if J. Cole was the person that told Dr. Dre about K. Dot. “Who told you that? Who gave you that piece of information?” J. Cole said. “…The answer is, yes. I did. I’m not gonna say I was the first to tell him [...] I was like, ‘Yo, you gotta sign this kid from Compton.” Although Cole and Dre did talk about Kendrick during sessions on Detox, a member of Dre’s team already had an eye on the now-iconic rapper that signed to Aftermath back in 2013.

Nardwuar then asked J. Cole if he wanted to sign Kendrick Lamar if he knew about him during the early stages of his career. “100 percent. I don’t know what I would’ve signed him to, you know what I mean? We didn’t have our business intact, but that’s how much I rocked with him at that time. I met him, and instantly was highly impressed. That would’ve been the first artist in my mind [to sign], but come to find out, he had bigger shit going on.”

Taking place on the seventh anniversary of J. Cole’s Forest Hills Drive, Nardwuar presented the rapper with a series of fitting gifts while digging up obscure elements of his past.

Check out Nardwuar’s J. Cole interview in full above.