On Friday (April 7), critically-acclaimed rapper Joey Bada$$ released his second studio album, All-Amerikkkan Bada$$, which features replay-worthy melodies from Kirk Knight to Statik Selektah. On the features side, the Brooklyn native called upon ScHoolboy Q, Nyck Caution, and Styles P to help convey his timely message, but one rapper’s appearance holds an interesting story.
According to DJ Booth, J. Cole’s feature on Joey’s “Legendary” song might be the last we hear of the Fayetteville native in terms of starring on another artist’s melody. In an interview with Ebro Darden’s Beats 1 show, the Pro Era leader shared that Cole’s verse arrived the day before he released his now-platinum album, 4 Your Eyez Only.
“Cole already told me he was getting me my verse,” Joey said. “And literally, he told me like, ‘Joe you are the only person I got on my feature list. I ain’t doing no more features. Only your feature is the one that’s important to me.’ Literally, the day before 4 Your Eyez Only came out, he sent the verse back.” DJ Booth points out that Cole’s previous guest feature was “Jermaine’s Interlude” off of DJ Khaled’s Major Key album.
On the lyrical content on Joey’s latest project, he said he tapped into real life events of police brutality and racial injustice to create the tracks. “Everything that I talked about are things I strongly feel should be spoken about,” he said. “During the making of this project, before I even made it, I was going through a point in my life as a young black musician [where] I was feeling connected to a lot of things you would see in the news.”