J. Cole Continued His Year Of Surprise Appearances At Lil Baby’s Birthday Show In Atlanta

It may only be a few days after Christmas, but for some of hip-hop’s elite, there’s no such thing as a vacation. J. Cole, who spent the year on an absolute tear of surprise live appearances and scene-stealing feature verses, continued his campaign at Lil Baby’s hometown show in Atlanta on Wednesday night (December 27), popping out to surprise the concertgoers with a performance of his 2014 Forest Hills Drive fan favorite, “No Role Modelz” and his Revenge Of The Dreamers III standout, “Middle Child.”

Cole’s string of surprise performances included coming out in Montreal to surprise fans at Drake’s It’s All A Blur tour as 21 Savage’s replacement. Then, he did the same thing for fans at 50 Cent’s Final Lap tour in Brooklyn. He also joined Lil Durk during his iHeartRadio Festival performance in Las Vegas to perform their collaboration “All My Life” for the first time. The next surprise came with “Pretty Little Fears” collaborator 6lack in LA, after which Cole circled back around to reconnect with Drake for the announcement of their Big As The What? tour, extending the It’s All A Blur tour in 2024.

Along the way, he dropped verses with K-pop star J-Hope, Summer Walker, his own Dreamville artist Bas, the surprising collaborators Gucci Mane and Lil Yachty, multiple tracks with Drake (including his first-ever No. 1), and Nicki Minaj. He’s had a busy year, and he STILL has yet to release his long-awaited album, The Fall-Off.