J. Cole Rejects Retirement – “I’m Not Using That Word”

J. Cole rejected retirement talk in a new GQ interview, saying his plans changed as he finished The Fall-Off.

He had intended the album to be his last. The rapper spoke with longtime mentor Mark Pitts and GQ’s Frazier Tharpe during Labor Day weekend in Las Vegas.

“No, I’m not using that word at all,” Cole said when Tharpe asked about retirement.

He described feeling drained during the album’s creation before finding fresh drive to make music. Pitts had doubted he was through.

“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,” J. Cole explained.

Cole had been thinking about retirement long before this interview.

In his 2021 SLAM cover story, when The Fall-Off was still in development, Cole explained that he wanted to push his skills far enough to feel satisfied if he never made another album. Finishing that work would also give him room to pursue other interests.

He traced the idea to the period after 2014 Forest Hills Drive and its tour. Success had let him slow down, but he soon questioned whether he had done all he could as a writer and producer. He told SLAM that he began working on The Fall-Off in early 2016 while making 4 Your Eyez Only.

Even then, Cole would not commit to a final album. He told SLAM he could not know whether he would want to record again several years later.

The work was meant to let him walk away with no regrets, while leaving room to return if he felt inspired. He also described daily writing as practice that had helped him build The Warm Up.

The finished album arrived February 6 as his seventh studio release. Its concert run gave that long project a much larger stage: the original announcement mapped out more than 50 cities in over 15 countries. The run was announced to start July 11 in Charlotte, North Carolina, at Spectrum Center.

As AllHipHop previously reported, “The Fall-Off Tour” was his first solo headlining trek since “The Off-Season Tour” in 2021. It also marked his first full global run since 2017’s “4 Your Eyez Only World Tour.”

The announced itinerary stretched through Europe, Australia and New Zealand before a December 12 finale at Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium.

For now, Cole told GQ that he wanted more time with family while touring and hoped to do more production.