Hi, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd.

We have to talk about Mr. J. Cole because he has just dropped a new song titled "Port Antonio" that is dominating a lot of discussion online because within the bars of this track, he pretty much addresses bowing out of the Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef.

Now, before I even get into the track, one has to wonder why is J. Cole saying this now? Why is this track coming out now, weeks and weeks and weeks after the rivalry, the heat between Kendrick Lamar and Drake has effectively cooled off. Because honestly, since bowing out of the beef, J. Cole, for the most part, seems to have been living in his own world where none of this is happening. He's either chilling on the beach or he is coming out with literally some of the worst features of his entire career.

Look, J. Cole is a pretty self-aware guy. He's a seasoned veteran as of this point. You would have to think the only reason he's coming out with these tracks and sidestepping any discussion of this issue is because he wants to. This is just what he wants to do. No one can make him do otherwise. This is the path he's chosen.

Now, effectively, we are detouring from the detour. Cole is now effectively trying to clear the air around something I don't even know if we need the air cleared around. Because even without J. Cole having said anything, it's apparent that he doesn't see the point in going back and forth with his contemporaries in this way, and that's reason enough not to do it if he feels that passionately about it.

But no, for some reason, out of the blue, he feels the need to justify it with this new song, "Port Antonio", which effectively works in two verses, has your standard J. Cole, sad boy talk/sung flow, where he's narrating you through his thoughts, and it's set to a dramatic and glamorous beat with some chipmunked vocal samples in the background. Production-wise, flow-wise, I would say it's pretty much standard Cole. The song sounds fine, just very middle of the road, to be expected.

If anybody is sitting there reacting to this, blown away by what's going on, they are 110% bullshitting you. Especially given that in the first verse of the track, J. Cole, once again, is essentially giving us his origin story. Having followed Cole's work for years, I feel like he's gone over this again and again and again and again. There is no rapper I have been lyrically reintroduced to more times than J. Cole. He goes into his life story on so many fucking new tracks as if he thinks you forgot about him since the last time you heard him.

Look, I get it – with hip hop being a genre that is so heavily based on storytelling and personal storytelling, of course, artists are going to repeatedly go back into their past – whether it's Kanye or Common or Eminem or Kendrick Lamar or even Logic on his latest full-length LP, who I think did a great job of reframing the way his love of media ties in with the escapism that he engaged in in order to disassociate from the abuse he was suffering during his childhood. Also, the way Nas went into his past repeated times over the course of his 'King's Disease' trilogy. Going into your past in hip hop, nothing new.

But J. Cole repeatedly engages in this practice in a way where it feels like he's just overheating leftovers in the microwave. And he's just giving us the same past experiences and tropes and thematic angles that he has given us time and time and time again with no new perspective on any of it.

As far as I can tell, the only purpose this first verse serves is to essentially tell us that the reason J. Cole got into rapping in the first place was to cope with emotions and hard times and stuff going on in his personal life. Not only is that already obvious without him saying it, but it's also the motivation for a lot of different rappers and artists out there. Why does this need to be stated in your case as if you're unique in this way? But also with this inference out of the way, what else needs to be said beyond here? The track could end right now, and yet it doesn't.

Now, J. Cole goes into the second verse of this track and makes some fair points as to why this beef between Kendrick and Drake was kind of a farce, pointless to engage in to begin with. He points out that this beef is essentially, in a way, a popularity contest, and if that's the case, you can't please everybody, which sure is true. And that much of what happened between Kendrick and Drake industry-wise can be boiled down to greed or a desire to make more money. I mean, regardless of Kendrick and Drake's motivations for going at each other, you can't deny the fact that both of them were quick to get these tracks up on streaming, on social media, and that both of them surely made a boatload of money off of the engagement they got off of these tracks.

He goes on to essentially reduce this beef down to social media drama and algorithmic heat. He also says, If I engaged in this full-on, I would have lost a friend, I would have made enemies, which could also be true, too. Even if that doesn't fully jive with the logic that it's just all money or something. Because if it truly was just all about money and stirring the pot, then you would have to imagine on some level that there aren't really any hard feelings there. When in fact, I think very obviously there were, which is why J. Cole his narrative here starts to fall apart as he throws out more lines. Saying essentially that Kendrick and Drake went at each other in the way that they did in order to build their legacies and be number one. Did you even listen to any of the fucking tracks?

I mean, for sure, there is an element of competition to what Drake and Kendrick engaged in months ago at this point. But there was also very clearly something personal going on there. Attempting to slander and defame one another, dig up dirt on one another. This clearly was not just a show of like, 'Yeah, I'm more technically proficient and more impressive of a lyricist than you are.' This obviously wasn't just about being number one or being the best. These two don't seem to like each other.

Furthermore, Kendrick did that "Let the Party Die" track where he further explained his motivations for engaging in the beef, I guess, as an attempt to highlight goings-on and trends within the hip hop community behind the scenes that he doesn't really seem to like. Be that the materialism, the hedonism, not really giving people substance with your work and with your platform, taking advantage of others.

I mean, you could argue a lot of things in the face of this song, that it's an attempt on Kendrick's part to wield power he doesn't actually have, that it's him dipping into his savior complex a little bit again, which is something that he narratively tried to back away from on Mr. Morale. Again, you could argue a lot of things, but he made his motivations painfully clear, and he obviously wasn't just doing this to be number one. So again, I wonder if J. Cole was even paying attention to the back and forth between Kendrick and Drake and picking up on the substance of it.

From here, he goes on to drop bars about how he's still really impressive and amazing as a rapper, and that he feels he shouldn't be stripped of his status in the hip hop community because of the fact that he backed out of this beef. And he likens himself to a gun that is still deadly even if you didn't shoot it, which honestly is a very sad, sad piece of cope. Like, 'Yeah, I could have done some real damage in this beef if I actually tried, if I actually did something.' Which like, man, we heard that track on "Might Delete Later". We heard that. That response to Kendrick was trash.

And a lot of the disses on that track amounted to completely delusional takes on Kendrick's back catalog. Like, yeah, TPAB, that album's not that good. Quite a thing to say when you don't have a single album on that level in your catalog, but whatever. J. Cole also essentially makes clear on this track, once again, that he wants to be a man of peace, that he's essentially taking the pacifist route here, which is why he didn't engage in the beef. Again, I feel like we already knew that. I feel like that was already made clear by previous statements and actions.

To finish this review off, I have to wonder, why did he make this song? Why does it exist? It truly tells us nothing that we didn't already know. Musically and lyrically, by J. Cole's usual standards, it's okay. It essentially clears the air around nothing. Frankly, I feel like it puts J. Cole in an even worse place. It's really sad to sit here and listen to him, convince himself that, 'Yeah, if I got engaged in this beef, man, it would have been crazy. Then it really would have been deadly.'

Again, did you even pay attention? I think this Drake and Kendrick thing got just about as bad as it could have gotten, with all of it having stayed on wax, of course. Considering all the personal attacks, and the slander, and the unsubstantiated rumors that were thrown back and forth in these tracks, I don't see how J. Cole getting involved would have brought things even further into the mud. It was in the mud. If Cole stayed in this thing, he would have been the dude in the threesome nobody's paying attention to anyway, which is a sad thought, and that's essentially what I think this new track is from Cole. It's a sad thought.

But yeah, those are my thoughts on that, essentially. What are yours? Let me know in the comments. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano. J. Cole. Forever.