J. Cole Fans Can’t Believe He Opened His Album with a ‘Rick and Morty’ Name-Drop

Ten years after he went triple platinum with no features, J.Cole decided to draw inspiration from Rick and Morty on his newest album to the outrage of many of his longtime fans — I guess not everyone’s ready to Get Schwifty.

Right now, Fayetteville, North Carolina-raised rapper Jermaine Lamarr Cole, better known as J.Cole, is embroiled in one of the highest-profile A-list beefs since Rick Sanchez and the president had their last pissing contest. Back in December, Drake dropped a song called “First Person Shooter,” featuring Cole, in which Cole claimed that he, Drake and Kendrick Lamar are the “big three” of modern hip hop. Two weeks ago, Lamar rebuffed the comparison in a verse on Metro Boomin’ and Future’s song “Like That,” declaring, “big three — it's just big me.” 

With Friday’s surprise release of the new J. Cole album Might Delete Later, Cole further escalated the tensions with a handful of disses. And, to all the Rick and Morty fans out there, no, none of that came from an episode of “Interdimensional Cable.”

It would be reasonable to assume that there isn’t much overlap between Cole’s stans and the Rick and Morty fandom, and, looking at how Cole’s Twitter following responded to the new album, that assumption is 100 percent correct. In the very first verse of the very first song “Pricey,” Cole raps, “Climbed up out the trenches as a shorty with intentions / To switch my whip as much as Rick and Morty switch dimensions.” 

His fans did not like what he’s got.

While the general reaction to the Rick and Morty reference was to ruthlessly trash Cole for his taste in TV shows, there was a small but vocal contingency from that tiny sliver where the “J. Cole fans” and “Rick and Morty watchers” circles on the Venn diagram intersect who supported the name drop. One such fan exclaimed, “J COLE SAID ‘RICK AND MORTY’ ON HIS ALBUM, ALBUM OF THE YEAR, ARTIST OF THE DECADE!!!”

Hilariously, the Rick and Morty line at the top of the first song wasn’t the only reference Cole made to adult animated comedies, nor was it the most controversial. In fact, Cole bookended the album with lines just for the comedy fans as, in the first line of the first verse of the closing track “7 Minute Drill,” Cole rapped of his current nemesis Lamar, “I came up in the ’Ville, so I’m good when it’s tension / He still doin’ shows, but fell off like The Simpsons.”

Much like The Simpsons, rap beefs aren’t nearly as exciting today as they were in the 1990s, but you have to respect the risk Cole took in telling the world that he’s an unashamed Rick and Morty fan. Adult animated comedies haven’t enjoyed this much attention in front-page hip-hop news since Kanye came out as a gay fish.