Years before J. Cole was smoking up the rap charts, he was a 6-year-old taking drags on a cigarette.
The 38-year-old “No Role Modelz” rapper, whose real name is Jermaine Cole, spoke about his single mother, Kay, being disillusioned to find out about his habit during Tuesday’s episode of the “Lead by Example With Bob Myers” podcast.
“At 6 years old, I used to be smoking cigarettes frequently across the neighborhood,” Cole, who grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, told Myers, the president and general manager of the Golden State Warriors.
“I used to be all the time hanging across the older kids within the neighborhood that [my older brother, Zach] was hanging around they usually were smoking. And I used to be young and fearless and attempting to be cool.”
“So, it was like, ‘Oh, y’all smoking. Let me see that.’ And, after all, we’re all on the market [with] young parents, long leashes. Not that [my mom] knew I used to be doing this,” Cole continued.
He explained that the 10-year-old neighbor kids thought it was “funny” that the teen smoked — until his brother caught him asking for a cig and ran home to inform their mom.
“She was like, ‘Say something,’” Cole recalled of the confrontation together with his mom, an Army veteran. “I used to be like, ‘What do you mean, say something?’ and after I said it she bent down, she smelled the cigarette smoke on my breath.
“The rationale why I feel that was a life-changing moment where after that I didn’t need much correction — I became a self-corrector — is because that was the primary time I became aware that, ‘Oh, my actions can hurt another person,’” he explained.
The Grammy winner also took up pro basketball overseas with the Rwanda Patriots within the Basketball Africa League in 2021.
Last 12 months, he played guard for Canada’s Scarborough Shooting Stars; Cole previously played highschool basketball in North Carolina.
“I loved listening to music, pretending that I’m Bobby Brown or pretending that I’m Michael Jackson,” Cole claimed when Myers asked whether music or basketball was his “past love.”
“I just remember the love of listening to music then basketball got here years later because everybody across the neighborhood is playing basketball, but after all — you’re a child —everybody’s going to the NBA of their mind,” he said. “That was me.”
