J. Cole is officially done talking about being done. In a new GQ conversation with his longtime mentor Mark Pitts and GQ’s Frazier Tharpe, published Wednesday (October 28), J. Cole shut down the retirement question fast.
“No, I’m not using that word at all. No, no, no, no,” he said when Tharpe asked if he was still throwing the idea around.
J. Cole on retirement after The Fall-Off
That’s a real shift. Cole has spent years hinting at an exit, and The Fall-Off arrived in February carrying a lot of farewell energy. He confirmed that was the plan, at least at first. “I was saying that I made The Fall-Off with intentions that it’s going to be my last shit,” he said. “Luckily, by the time I got to actually finishing the album, because of the circumstances, it’s like, oh, nah, I’ll never say I’m going to retire. I don’t know whenever the next thing is going to happen, but, I’m definitely not going to say no.”
Also read Interview: How PFG went from a potential ‘Fall-Off’ feature to an entire J. Cole-produced album
So no new album, no date, no tease. Just the door back open.
J. Cole Sits Down With GQ
The sit-down, filmed in Las Vegas during a break on his Fall-Off Tour, also went back to 2024. Cole said Pitts checked on him while the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle was heating up, before his apology, but he kept the real weight to himself. “I should have used him a little more, I ain’t going to lie,” Cole said. He explained he had Kendrick on the album at the time, which “puts me in a weird position, I got to respond without responding, but still try to save face. I was holding a lot.” He added that he thought he was finished with the album and was “retired, uninspired in my mind.”
The rest of the talk is a love letter to Pitts, from bringing Cole to Jay-Z and Roc Nation to the “play the game to change the game” advice Cole still quotes. Asked what’s next, Cole kept it simple: he’d love to produce more, but for now he’s “locked in on this tour, trying to get back to the family more consistently.”
