J. Cole on Why He Admires the Sacrifice of Colin Kaepernick

The rapper tells us about meeting Kaepernick and how he risked it all to protest for what was right.
This image may contain J. Cole Hair Human and Person

J. Cole doesn’t remember how he met Colin Kaepernick. They just happened to run into each other a few times the year of Kap’s rookie season on the 49ers—You know how famous people are, Cole seemed to say. But he was there on the day Kap threw his very first touchdown against the Jets, back in 2012, when the world hadn’t yet gone crazy. “We kept in touch a little bit,” Cole said. “I’m not gonna say we was like cool, but I respected the dude.” Over the past year, though, as Kaepernick began his silent protests during the national anthem, Cole’s respect turned into something a lot closer to admiration. But it wasn’t just the protest. It was the interviews after, too. “His answers were just so clear and potent. And like right on point. And he wasn’t backing down. And he wasn’t afraid.” He wasn’t looking for attention. “Not anything personally against him, I just didn’t know that the person with the biggest balls in sports…you know, would be him.”

That pride brought the two men back together. “I went from being a fan to being a real supporter. First quietly, and then…you know, outwardly, once I felt like this dude needs more voices in his corner.” Cole was similarly blunt during the rest of our conversation. And let me be clear, or at least as clear as he was with me: Cole wasn’t there for Cole. He was there for Kap, because showing up is what real supporters do.


GQ: What role do you play in his life? Where do you think you fit in?

J. Cole: What I try to do is, I try to just give advice here and there on like…what I think. You know, maybe things he should be doing. Because I know that he’s such a…he’s such a…like, a humble dude? That he doesn’t really seek help much. And he’s really handling this thing on his own. I really saw that. We spoke after my New York show, and that’s the first we had spoke in a long time, and the first time we had spoke since he did what he did. And you know we had a long-ass conversation. Hours. After the show. We was in there ‘til like 3 in the morning. Like, they literally had to kick us out of the Barclay’s Center because we was in there so long. And I just noticed right then that “Oh, man, this dude is like…he’s really doing this on his own.” At the end of the day, he’s gonna make his own decision.

What do you do in your own life? Do you protest anything? Like, are you…I mean, you seem like a person who stands up for what they believe in, but what does that look like for you?

Fuck the money—he sacrificed his dream.

The question is weird. You know what I mean? Asking me what do I protest. I don’t live my life in protest. I’m just trying to live my life and do the right thing. Now, that includes not fucking with something, not watching the movie because it represents something that I don’t mess with, I’m not supporting a business because they support ideas that I don’t rock with—then that’s what I do.

People don’t understand that [Kaepernick] had millions of dollars. People don’t understand that this dude sacrificed his livelihood, his dream, and his career. That’s the real shit. Fuck what I’m protesting. No. He’s already done it. There’s nothing I can say that is gonna be equivalent to what this man has already done. That’s what we should be talking about.

Tell me about that.

Think about this. You’re young. How old is Colin? What he gotta be, 27 or something? 28? So you’re talking about a guy in his athletic prime—he’s still in his prime years—who’s lived his whole life, the majority of his life, dreaming about playing football to a level that millions of kids dream to get to. In his breakout season, he takes his team to the NFL, he comes within 5 yards of winning a Super Bowl.

And then at some point in time he becomes conscious enough about what’s happening in the world. Somewhere along the line, either it was the books he was reading, the documentaries he was watching, something happened, and he became conscious and aware of what was happening around him.

We’ve all been doing that blindly, we’ve all been standing. I don’t care if it’s in middle school or elementary school, we used to say the pledge of allegiance. At middle-school games, we used to stand up for the national anthem. High school games. College games. And suddenly something that he’s been doing blindly for his whole life—standing for the national anthem—now feels uncomfortable. Why? Because now it feels like he’s…it feels phony! It feels like, Man, how can I stand for this thing when this country is not holding itself true to the principles it says it stands for? Now I’m uncomfortable. Now I feel like we’re lying. So think about that. Now that he doesn’t even feel comfortable enough to stand up, he’s not looking for attention. It wasn’t an excuse to get attention. But a few games in, people did call attention to it. And they asked him why he did it. And he says, “I don’t feel comfortable standing for these reasons.”

Now he’s blackballed from the NFL. He can’t get a job with any team. Period, point blank. We’re not talking about a guy who ever signed like, uh, an incredible contract where he could just lay back for the rest of his life and never have to work again. You’re talking about a dude who was about to get that check somewhere. He was about to go somewhere and get that life-changing money.

And more important than the money, he was living his dream. Fuck the money, he woulda been living his dream! The dude wants to play football. But he sacrificed that. And because he did what he did, now that might not ever happen again. So to me that’s the story. Like, look what this dude sacrificed. He sacrificed—fuck the money—he sacrificed his dream. Every day the dude wakes up and he’s still practicing. He’s still training. You know he still wants to play. And he’s not crying about it. He’s not throwing a pity party. No, he just wants to play. He believes, like, Damn, if I just do the right thing, I’ll be able to play. I didn’t do anything wrong. To me that’s the story.

Interview has been edited and condensed. A version of this interview appeared in our December 2017 cover story, "Colin Kaepernick Will Not Be Silenced."


Watch Now:
Colin Kaepernick Visits Harlem for his GQ Men of the Year Moment