What Is J. Cole’s ‘7 Minute Drill?’ The Meaning Behind The Title Of His Kendrick Lamar Diss

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Kendrick Lamar had perhaps the musical headline of March with his featured appearance on Future and Metro Boomin’s We Don’t Trust You song “Like That.” On the track, he raps, “Motherf*ck the big three, n****, it’s just big me,” an apparent reference to Drake and J. Cole’s 2023 single “First Person Shooter.”

Since then, fans have been waiting for a response from either of the targeted rappers. Last night/this morning (April 5), Cole delivered one on his surprise new mixtape, Might Delete Later. The track of note here is “7 Minute Drill,” which features these lyrics seemingly alluding to Lamar:

“He still doin’ shows, but fell off like The Simpsons / Your first sh*t was classic, your last sh*t was tragic / Your second sh*t put [people] to sleep but they gassed it / Your third sh*t was massive and that was your prime / I was trailin’ right behind and I just now hit mine / Now I’m front of the line with a comfortable lead / How ironic, now that I got it he want somethin’ with me / Well he caught me at the perfect time, jump up and see / Boy, I got here off of bars, not no controversy / Funny thing about it, b*tch, I don’t even want the prestige / F*ck the Grammy’s ’cause them crackers ain’t never done nothin’ for me, ho.”

That still leaves one question:

What Is J. Cole’s “7 Minute Drill?” The Meaning Behind The Title Of His Kendrick Lamar Diss

Ibrahim Hamad, Cole’s longtime manager and Dreamville co-founder, explained on the Say Less Podcast (as Complex notes). Hamad said of Cole, “He does these seven-minute drills […] where he’ll just be like, ‘You got seven minutes.’ It’s basically his way of breaking out of overthinking. Like, ‘Don’t even think about it, start a verse. What are we going to talk about?’ He’ll be like, ‘Yo, Cozz, write a verse about… pizza,’ I don’t know. And then they got seven minutes, and then they put the timer on, and then it’s like, ‘Alright, what you got?’”

Might Delete Later is out now via Cole World/Interscope. Find more information here.