J. Cole’s “7 Minute Drill” cracked the Top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart even though fans can no longer listen to it on Spotify and TIDAL. The Kendrick Lamar diss track debuted at No. 6 after Cole removed the song from the streaming services.
Cole’s diss received 23.4 million streams in its first week. It marked the 13th Top 10 song of his career.
“7 Minute Drill” was released in response to Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That,” which remained at No. 1 on the Hot 100 for a third week. “Like That” featured Kendrick Lamar, who dissed Cole and Drake on the song. Kendrick referenced lyrics from Drake’s“First Person Shooter” in which Cole referred to the trio as the “big three” in Hip-Hop.
“F### sneak dissing, first-person shooter, I hope they came with three switches/I crash out like, ‘F### rap,’ diss Melle Mel if I had to/Got 2TEEZ with me, I’m snatching chains and burning tattoos, it’s up/Lost too many soldiers not to play it safe/If he walk around with that stick, it ain’t André 3K/Think I won’t drop the location? I still got PTSD/M######### the big three, n####, it’s just big me,” Kendrick rapped.
Cole returned fire with “7 Minute Drill,” the closing track of his surprise release Might Delete Later.
“I came up in the Ville, so I’m good when it’s tension/He still doing shows, but fell off like The Simpsons/Your first s### was classic, your last s### was tragic/Your second s### put n##### to sleep, but they gassed it/Your third s### was massive and that was your prime/I was trailing right behind and I just now hit mine/Now I’m front of the line with a comfortable lead/How ironic, soon as I got it, now he want something with me/Well, he caught me at the perfect time, jump up and see,” he rapped.
But Cole regretted dropping the song. He apologized and announced he was taking the song off streaming services at the 2024 Dreamville Festival.
“That’s the lamest s### I ever did in my f###### life,” Cole told the audience.
Cole doubled down on the apology by appearing on Future and Metro Boomin’s We Still Don’t Trust You album. The move left Drake alone in a rap battle that dragged Rick Ross, A$AP Rocky and The Weeknd into the mix.