It’s been two years since J. Cole dropped his last album, The Off-Season. Since then, he’s been hard at work on his upcoming album, The Fall Off. But he’s been keeping fans fed with incredible feature verses through collaborations with artists like Young Thug, Summer Walker, Lil Durk, and Drake — the lattermost helping him earn his first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1.
As Cole has shown to be the one to call to add a little spark to your track, listeners are wondering how much he charges for a guest verse.
Does J. Cole charge for rap features?
In 2019, Young Thug released “The London,” a song featuring Travis Scott and J. Cole. On Cole’s verse, he seemingly implies that his guest spots come with a hefty price tag.
“I left a flock of rappers dead and buried / A verse from me is like eleven birds / Just did the math, that’s like two thousand dollars every word,” he raps on his verse.
On an episode of Lil Yachty’s A Safe Place podcast, Cole clarified that despite this particular line, he actually does not charge artists for features.
“It’s just a bar, bro,” said Cole. “A lot of my bars be really on point, but man that’s just a flex. I’m not gonna charge [artists] $2000 a word. I don’t even charge [artists] for the verse. I’m doing this sh*t because I’m inspired to do it.”
You can see the full episode of A Safe Place above.