New music from the pre-J. Cole fame!
If you are a J. Cole fan, but weren’t aware he had a name before that, he did. Jermaine actually went by the name Therapist before he adopted J. Cole as his rap name. Material from those days is rare, but a collaboration titled “The O’Jays” with a rapper by the name of Nervous Reck surfaced this week. Reck actually played a big part in the early days before Cole World was born, and they happened to collaborate a few times in the past.
Read what Nervous Reck had to say about how the track came about:
“The reason I like [“The O’Jays”] most is because I would challenge Cole all the time to talk about certain things in his verses. This time he was visiting me when I lived in Wake Forest and he had an Ojays sample. I took it and threw some drums on there and he just started writing a story to it. It was about us getting robbed and carjacked by some acquaintances. After he was done he was like “Yo Nerv, you gotta finished the story.” So he challenged me to finish a story from my perspective. He had to leave and get back to school in NY so I think I finished it and sent it to him the next day and he was like “Yooo how did you finish it like that? This shit is crazy!”
Cole has several songs on both of my mixtapes that most people have never heard. I’ve never put them on the net. They were hard copies only. So only a small amount of people have them.“
[Source]