On February 6, 2026, J. Cole released what was supposed to be his final album. At the last minute, he turned The Fall-Off into a double album when he heard Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Like That”. He had previously teased that the album would be his last, though upon releasing the album, he walked back this decision. Additionally, he embarked on a massive tour that further solidified that he wasn’t going anywhere. Initially, he indicated that The Fall-Off would be his last, but quickly hinted that he changed his mind shortly after the album’s release. With all of this still up in the air for months, J. Cole has officially announced that he’s cancelling his retirement plans.
On the NFR Podcast, J. Cole stated, “When I was making that album, I was making it like, ‘Damn, this is going to be my last sh*t.’ Luckily, by the time I got to actually finishing the album, because of circumstances, I’m like, ‘Nah, I’ll never say I’m going to retire.”
J. Cole is a frequent guest on the podcast, which is why it was the perfect space to announce his retirement cancellation.
J. Cole Will Continue His Reign
Since his 2011 debut album, Cole World: The Sideline Story, J. Cole has consistently released successful albums. Each of his seven studio albums has not only peaked at No. 1 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, but also reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200. With this, J. Cole is among the most successful rappers in charting history. If J. Cole were to retire after The Fall-Off, he would’ve gone out on top with nothing less than No. 1 albums. With no intention of retiring, J. Cole’s next albums have a lot to live up to. This won’t be hard, though, as the rapper has comfortably dominated since 2011.
His most recent album, The Fall-Off, is a concept album about visiting his hometown of Fayetteville, North Carolina. In the first half of the album, J. Cole is visiting at the age of 29. He’s 39, ten years older, during the second half of the album. In addition to his rap career, J. Cole has played basketball in three separate leagues. He currently plays for the Nanjing Monkey Kings in the Chinese Basketball Association.
Not all hip-hop feuds are alike. If you’re a lifetime subscriber to the culture, this doesn’t need explaining. If you can’t tell Nicki Minaj and Cardi B apart — and I’ve met enough folks to know there are plenty of y’all out there — last week’s events may have confused you.
I get it: Both dominated social media recently, albeit for very different reasons. Cardi B’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert debut on Monday, Oct. 19, became one of those “break the internet” cultural salvos that rippled across our feeds for days. Backed by a live band led by Emmy-winning producer and musical director Adam Blackstone, the rapper performed a tight setlist that included hits like “Bodak Yellow” and an emotional rendition of “Man of Your Word.”
The following Sunday, Minaj, perhaps answering the call of Donald Trump’s glute-gawking tour, flew with the president on Air Force One to a rally in Port Huron, Michigan. Minaj led the crowd in a chant of “We love Trump,” which had about as much rhythmic flow as people who clap on the ones and threes can handle.
One event may not seem related to another unless you know the two hip-hop stars represent opposing sides in a spiteful cold war that’s dragged on since 2017. This carpaccio of beefs tends to heat up whenever one steps into the spotlight, so you can’t help but wonder whether Minaj would have flocked to Trump if not for Cardi’s grand cultural moment.
When Minaj was in her stride, she earned the moniker “Queen of Rap.” Cardi, however, became the first woman in history to win the Grammy Award for best rap album as a solo artist. Minaj was a judge on the 12th season of “American Idol.” Cardi B has partnered on tracks with a variety of popular artists, including Megan Thee Stallion.
While Minaj has more studio albums, Cardi B is a prolific hitmaker known for her metrical prowess and a kind of braggadocio that’s hard to beat. Some of her hardest-hitting lyrics also make people wonder if she’s speaking to anyone in particular. Take this line from Cardi’s newest track “Don’t Chart,” her contribution to “Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album”: “First thing first, ho, know your part/ Act like an old-a** whip and don’t start.” That’s fire, the kind that makes you want to cozy up under a blanket with your favorite mug of tea. And spill.
(Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The one thing Americans love more than a celebrity feud is taking sides and declaring a victor after each round, even if the opponents don’t realize they’re being pitted against each other. The ‘90s East Coast-West Coast rivalry was manufactured by competing record labels and claimed the lives of two of hip-hop’s all-time greats, but fans still declared allegiance to one side or the other.
Only much later did some people recognize that such parasocial loyalty led them to back a violent criminal currently serving prison time, Suge Knight, and Sean Combs, who used his friend’s murder as a springboard to fame, has been accused of multiple rapes and sex trafficking and is also doing time.
Team Drake versus Team Kendrick Lamar emerged from the former poking at the latter until Lamar smacked Drake down in his diss track “Not Like Us.” After it became a hit, Lamar swept up multiple Grammys as if they popped out of the Canadian rapper like coins flying from a “Mario Kart” loser.
The Cardi B-Minaj rivalry is different. Cardi is just the latest high-profile woman Minaj has gone after over the years, having previously picked fights with Mariah Carey, Lil’ Kim and Remy Ma. But her Cardi vendetta is more famous in no small part because of Minaj’s public MAGA turn. As Minaj told Time magazine earlier this year, she’s long harbored conservative views but didn’t feel comfortable expressing them for fear of alienating her fans. Then, in 2025, she made anti-trans statements and sat down for a chat with Erika Kirk at a Turning Point USA conference. In early 2026, she appeared at a U.S. Treasury event, declaring herself Trump’s No. 1 fan.
She has plenty of competition for that title in Trump’s inner circle. Still, right now, that pledge of allegiance gives White House communications director Steven Cheung’s Sunday video post a level of credence we wouldn’t otherwise take seriously. “Ladies and gentlemen, I think we may have found the new White House Press Secretary!” Cheung said on X.
Between that and Trump’s callout from the rally podium praising Minaj’s backside – “By the way, I looked at one hell of a beautiful a** before… Nicki Minaj. That’s hard to miss!” – recent events have led to frenzied discussion as to whether Cheung was joking. One can’t rule anything out in a presidency willed into existence by punchlines and enraged laughter at visions of liberal tears. Minaj meets several of the president’s main qualifications for such a front-facing role: she’s famous, sycophantic, and apparently devoid of self-respect.
Questions remain about whether the performer, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, has secured citizenship yet, but that hasn’t stopped her from advocating for legislation requiring Americans to show ID to vote.
(Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Plus, after Katie Zacharia’s calamitous five-day stint in that job, it’s hard to imagine Minaj doing worse. In fact, I can’t think of a better way for Trump to show his open disdain for journalists than to put the “Starships” singer in front of the press corps, then sit back and watch the Barbz, as her toxic fandom is known, go to work harassing any reporter who asks tough questions.
In contrast, Cardi B is a history buff fascinated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency and the lasting impact of Eleanor Roosevelt. In a 2023 Hot Ones episode, she said she’s obsessed with learning about wars. Cardi was also one of many performers who appeared on the campaign trail in support of Kamala Harris and has gone on record with her feelings about Trump.
More recently, the New Yorker has thrown her weight behind local issues like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s universal child care program.
Nothing was overtly political about her Tiny Desk appearance other than what some might read into the details. Blackstone, for instance, bills himself as Minaj’s musical director, but it’s been a while since the Harajuku Barbie dropped a new track. (Her last studio album came out in 2023.) Cardi had her choice of backing talent. She picked him. Fascinating, no?
We can’t discount the identity politics at work here either. Cardi B proudly flaunts her sexual agency and power but never allows anyone to denigrate her for that. Meanwhile, Minaj’s willingness to showcase her rump for the pleasure of Trump’s followers is disturbing, generally and specifically. Trump and MAGA have a long history of insulting Black women’s appearance, intelligence and abilities. Of course, that never kept Stacey Dash, Omarosa Manigault Newman or his one-time sidekicks Diamond & Silk from supporting his first presidency.
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But Minaj’s twirl for Trump differs from his fixation on the physiques of Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted or Kentucky congressional candidate Ed Gallrein. Weird as those instances are, they aren’t attached to a history of objectifying Black bodies dating back to slavery.
On Monday’s edition of “The Breakfast Club,” host Charlamagne Tha God wondered whether Minaj is content to trade her legacy of demanding respect in proximity to power. “If a Black executive told her to stand up and show her body and spin around, she’d go crazy,” he said, later adding, “I just don’t want her to think just because she got a seat at the table, she’s not also on the menu.”
Whatever the case may be, it sure looks like Minaj is willing to sacrifice her dignity to get back on somebody’s stage. Meanwhile, Cardi’s career campaign keeps chugging along fiercely. “I can name this song, ‘Don’t Chart, it’s gon’ chart,” she brags on her new track, making it clear how much respect she’s earned and that anything less is unacceptable. That’s the side I’m backing.
Since 2020, we’ve seen Chrisean Rock transform multiple times. The reality star turned rapper continues to prove she has range and seemingly no physical limits. First, she appeared on the rapper Blueface’s OnlyFans reality show, called Blue Girls Club. On this show, she competed against other contestants and even got physical with Jaidyn Alexis, the mother of Blueface’s children, losing a front tooth during an altercation on the show. Ultimately, she won the show and signed with Blueface’s label.
Next, in 2022, she appeared on Baddies, a reality show on the Zeus Network, and later starred in Blueface & Chrisean: Crazy in Love, with her former OnlyFans host and on-and-off boyfriend. Around this time, Blueface accused Rock of stealing his car. She was later arrested in Oklahoma on drug charges.
A few months later, Blueface’s mother and sister accused Rock of physically assaulting them. In August 2022, she and Blueface got into a physical altercation on a sidewalk in Hollywood. And shortly after that, Blueface got into a fight with Rock’s father, in which she later defended Blueface. Chrisean Rock announced she was pregnant in January 2023. She gave birth to her son, Chrisean Jesus Porter (originally named Chrisean Jesus Malone Jr.), in September 2023. Years later, Blueface and Chrisean Rock were briefly engaged in October 2026. They quickly called off the engagement just ten days later, on October 21, 2026.
Stepping Into The Ring in 2026
Aside from becoming a reality TV star, Rock released a string of singles throughout the early 2020s. Among these, she earned a minor hit with “Mr. Take Ya Bitch” with Lil Mabu in 2023. The diss track was aimed at her former boyfriend, Blueface, and the rapper’s manager, Wack 100. It peaked at No. 96 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 24 on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
On April 25, 2026, Chrisean “Holy Hands” Rock made her crossover boxing debut at Harrah’s Philadelphia Casino. She impressively won her first bout against Zenith Zion for XRumble Fighting Championships. In September 2026, she defeated Ku’Shiyah Williams by second-round TKO in her professional boxing debut. She is scheduled to co-host the Influencer Fight Night at Harrah’s Philadelphia Casino on November 20 and has already teased another fight. However, despite her suggestion that she might fight on November 20, the event’s official listing names her as a host, and no opponent has been announced.
During a recent livestream, Chrisean Rock showed viewers what she described as her boxing earnings. The rapper and reality show star displayed a figure of more than $849,000, though the amount hasn’t been independently verified. Although she’s hinted at fighting again on November 20, her participation in a bout has not been confirmed. It seems that after years of public confrontations involving Blueface and his family, she’s shifted her focus to in-ring bouts instead.
He might look like something found in the dumpster at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. He might shamelessly plunder the sonics of decades of deep-fried and gravy-smothered hits. But despite everything about his presentation and performance, Kid Rock is not actually southern.
If he were, he might have done the friendly thing and warned Eminem off of collaborating on “Heal My Faith,” a song on his recent Christian album “Halfway 2 Jesus.” He might have stopped his longtime friend and fellow Michigander from irreparable reputational damage. Instead, he let Slim Shady learn a hard lesson that true southerners know: You lay down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.
“Heal My Faith” is genial to the point of being unmemorable, a bit of cringy Christian pablum that encourages loving someone even when you’re outside of the pit. It’s student-athlete core, a mish-mash of choirs, electric guitar noises over pounding drums that all sound like keyboard presets. Kid Rock’s contributions are entirely lifted from inspirational T-shirts, table scraps from rejected Jelly Roll songs. The result is that “Heal My Faith” offers very little to chew on — until Eminem shows up.
The boilerplate praise chug of the song has one upside: It forces the “Rap God” to slow down. Left to his own devices, middle-aged Eminem has been the hip-hop equivalent to masturbatory guitarists, his late-stage work full of technically impressive displays of chops that nonetheless lack the fun and melody of his radio hits. Hearing him enter the song with a flow that’s not indebted to a J.J. Fad outro offered a glimmer of hope. But it was short-lived.
On “Heal My Faith,” the rapper who first gained mainstream attention by lighting the pop chart’s sacred cows afire wonders why we can’t all just get along. It’s shocking stuff from the rapper who famously mused about dropping an “awfully hot coffee pot” on Donald Trump in a freestyle at the BET Hip Hop Awards in 2017. Now, Slim Shady seems to be saying, “We might believe in fundamentally opposed directions for this country. We might differ on the idea of extending dignity to all people, but can’t we put that aside for the sake of a new single you can buy?”
You don’t need to hear it. You’ve already heard it. It’s the realm of purple state campaign ads and Earthbound Trading Co. bumper stickers. It’s junk, and Eminem seems to know it.
How else can you explain a verse that is 90% throat-clearing and preemptive dodges of the backlash he knows is coming? Eminem spends bar after bar defending his decision to even appear on the song, touting his decades-long friendship with Kid Rock and their intertwined history in the music industry.
He talks about their shared roots in Detroit’s music scene, and how their paths crossed again and again. He details an early CD release party at length, where the more established Kid Rock showed up to lend support to the emerging rapper. It isn’t until the closing lines of his verse that Eminem turns to God and the brotherhood of man.
“Liberal and evangelical can agree,” he raps. “It’s God first, home of the free.”
Reputation-wise, the collaboration does far more for Kid Rock than it does for Eminem. The former has long been fully consumed by Trump World, becoming more of a standby entertainer for MAGA events than a rock star. Eminem, on the other hand, once told fans who supported Trump to stop streaming his music.
(Ke.Mazur/WireImage) Kid Rock and Eminem during Experience Music Project Opening Gala at Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington.
Rock told Billboard that he hadn’t planned to “drag [Eminem] into my political world,” but he had to have known that was impossible. The nod from a supposed Trump critic removes a small bit of the stain on Kid Rock, but it also transfers directly to his collaborator.
Eminem might have been hoping to build a bridge with this collaboration, but at least according to his Instagram comments, his fans aren’t ready to get over it. One commenter assured him that it’s okay to cut off a friendship “over moral differences.” Another said Eminem’s line in the sand against Trump must have been “brushed back into the beach.” The rapper’s newfound neutrality, one wrote, still amounted to “choosing a side.”
You can’t feel too bad for Eminem, who’s had plenty of opportunities to see that who you rap with is who you are. After all, more than a year after her breakout single “What I Want,” which she recorded with the controversial country music star Morgan Wallen, the pop singer Tate McRae is still being confronted by fans and interviewers with questions about the pair’s collaboration.
Wallen, who’s been given about as many second chances as gold records, has never explicitly identified himself as a supporter of the MAGA movement. But his history of using slurs on camera, the general nastiness of his dejected young man music and a massive social media tiff with “Saturday Night Live” have solidified him as an anti-woke warrior in the popular conception.
“It’s crazy to think that one song could define a whole person,” McRae told W Magazine earlier this month.“There are many aspects of my personality that three-quarters of my audience has no idea about. You hope one day you figure out a way to show all aspects of it.”
There’s little chance that Eminem will face such questions in the future, if only because his career as a hitmaker is basically over. He was something exciting and fresh when he pantsed the pop culture landscape in the late 1990s, but joking about how much everything sucks is a young man’s game. Coming from an older man, it just sounds bitter and out-of-touch.
Different listeners draw the start of his decline and the end of his relevancy at different points. Most agree that the zeitgeist of rap started to shift away from the stubbornly anachronistic rapper sometime around the end of the aughts. In 2013, he released a well-received album seemingly purpose-built to cap on his career, and then he just kept going. The 23-year-old McRae, on the other hand, will have her past decisions dug up by what remains of the music press after each new chart smash. Eminem may well be staring down a future where his regrettable decision to record contemporary worship dreck with Kid Rock generated his last real headlines.
It’s something the culturally savvy clown of Eminem’s early career would have been smart enough to avoid.
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