The 40 Best J. Cole Lyrics Of All Time

When it’s all said and done, no matter how far his career goes, ‘Premeditated Murder’ will hold up as one of the best songs J. Cole ever made. It dropped in 2010 and appeared on Friday Night Lights, and this poetic line from it will always have meaning to millions worldwide.

Another cut from Friday Night Lights, this bar has special meaning to J. Cole fans, who often find themselves with dreams that many feel are out of reach for them. Cole himself has been vocal about never telling anyone in school he rapped. A line that goes perfectly with this one is “if you really believe, ain’t gotta talk about it” from ‘Black Friday’.

‘Return of Simba’ arrived just a few weeks before J. Cole was set to put out his debut album after two years of delays and doubters claiming he’d never see a release under Roc Nation. It was a triumphant moment and ended with this line, likely an intentional double entendre but a potential quadruple entendre, with diamonds meaning the actual diamonds that coal makes, the diamonds from the Roc sign, him going diamond and dropping gems.

Cole himself called this his favourite line on the album and it’s hard to disagree, with the obvious play on “white” out and whitewashing history.

‘N*ggaz Know’ appears on Truly Yours 3, which came to fans as part of the deluxe edition of Born Sinner, J. Cole’s sophomore album. It’s an underrated cut for Cole, with this line being one of the reasons why. Of course, it’s a raw reference to 9/11, but also, Cole’s debut album dropped in September of 2011. It’s likely also a reference to the top of a Porsche 911.

This is a true story from very early on in J. Cole’s career, within a year and a half of him signing with JAY-Z. The way J. Cole took time to reflect on the conversation and went out of his way to respond in a song like this is incredible, not to mention giving the boy back the credit.

Another entry from ‘Return of Simba’, this line also has multiple meanings to it. Toast here can mean actual toast, praise and a gun.

You only have to see the video of J. Cole performing this song before its release and check the crowd’s reaction to this line to see how much it meant to people.

The intro to Born Sinner has a lot of lines on it that gives listeners the screwface and this is one. It’s not even that there’s a particular wit to it, it’s just the audacity of the first rapper signed to J. Cole admitting that his favourite rapper, 2Pac, once had him hating Hov.

The line heard around the world earlier this year when The Off-Season dropped. It is of course a slick reference to Mario having an M on his hat and J. Cole implying he could put a bounty of $1 million on someone’s head who he has an issue with.

What really makes this line so great is the emotion behind it. J. Cole is talking from his friend’s perspective here and stepping into other people’s shoes is something he does incredibly well.

Perhaps the truest words that Cole has ever spoken. ‘Love Yourz’ is the track which best embodies the epiphany the Fayetteville rapper had about his life and career in 2014, which was translated onto 2014 Forest Hills Drive.

I maintain that this song should have been called ‘Medit8’ because it would have contrasted nicely with ‘Motiv8’ which also appeared on KOD, but oh well. The build-up to this ending of the verse is great.

This line hits like a haymaker towards the end of ‘2Face’ and speaks to Jesus never seeing God, with Cole likening the situation to the one that so many with absent fathers face worldwide. 

Widely regarded as one of Cole’s best verses ever, ‘Looking For Trouble’ also featured Kanye West, Big Sean, CyHi The Prynce and Pusha T, but Cole took the win with multiple witty lines, this play on a cliché being one of them.

This could have been a throwaway line but Cole really went all the way with it, with the homophone of Coran and Q’uran and referencing the Wizards which he played for at the time.

A self-explanatory bar likening a white Range Rover to the great NBA Legend Larry Bird, who had a lot of range to his shooting.

Picking out one portion of the first verse of this song was tough, because the entire verse is one of the best of J. Cole’s career. This truly sums him up though, as someone who people can relate to despite his fame and success.

This is the second entry from Cole’s ‘Looking For Trouble’ verse, and the line that he closes the verse out with. Many at the time were calling the rapper Hip-Hop saviour, despite him still being somewhat under the radar and this bar is the perfect summation of that.

Due to the fact that it’s the first song on Cole’s breakout mixtape The Warm Up, ‘Welcome’ was the first time many heard Cole. He ends the song with a relatable and introspective line about not vocalising his problems, choosing instead to tackle them privately.

If you don’t know the story, J. Cole did a ‘Dead Presidents’ freestyle on his 2007 mixtape The Come Upbut someone came up to him telling him he had to go harder on the classic beat. His response was the sequel on The Warm Up, which featured this clever line.

To feel the full weight of these lyrics, it’s best to check out the footage of J. Cole in the studio recording this song. He was in his early twenties and nowhere near the star that he is now, which makes them far more powerful.

A beautifully written line from the North Carolina MC about finding a meaning to life and the answer not being part of science. There’s also the double meaning of sun and son.

Cole’s pair of verses on Cozz’s ‘Knock Tha Hustle’ remix are some of his best work, largely thanks to this great scheme which features a bunch of food puns. He references weight watchers, calls drugs “cake”, throws in a “stake/steak” play on words and ends it with “slim” chances.

As he once put it, “to never try is the ultimate fail”. J. Cole, with his Dreamville label, ‘Dollar & A Dream’ series and Dreamer sneakers, is clearly all for people pursuing their dreams and here on Truly Yourscut ‘Crunch Time’, warns the listener about the dangers of never doing so.

This is a line that only gets more sobering as time passes, with iPhones dropping almost annually. There’s of course the wordplay for prison cell and cellphone, but also, the song samples Gohan’s Anger Theme, and Cell is of course a Dragon Ball character.

When taken at face value, you might be wondering why these lines made it onto this list at all. J. Cole’s entire verse is not about a woman as framed, but about Hip-Hop, with her new boyfriend being Kendrick Lamar. Listen to it with that in mind and have your mind blown.

Wale’s ‘Beautiful Bliss’ was the first time that many heard of Cole and for them, he made an incredible first impression.

The ‘Album of the Year’ freestyle sees Cole rapping over Nas’ ‘Oochie Wally’, a timeless beat. This sequence of bars from it is the standout.

It took a long time for J. Cole to drop a freestyle with the L.A. Leakers, but when he finally did earlier this year before the release of The Off-Season, it was clear that it was worth the wait.

Cole showing out at HOT 97 in 2009 with Funkmaster Flex is one of the brighter moments of the early part of his career. He made an impression with Flex, who ended up asking him for more and telling him to “just curse, who cares?” This line was ruthless and is something we wish we heard more of from J. Cole.

‘Head Bussa’ appeared on the second Truly Yours bundle and is a favourite amongst Cole’s bigger fans, but relatively unknown to the masses.

J. Cole linking up with French Montana and Rick Ross for ‘Diamonds’ in 2012 was a strange pairing, but showed that Cole could do well in their lane with a stellar verse. He ends it with this gem, playing on the Catholic interpretation of Limbo being the place between Hell and Heaven where those not condemned are.

This line comes from a lesser-known J. Cole feature that he did for Tinie Tempah around ten years ago now, a couple of months after Cole World: The Sideline Story dropped. The line is a reflection of life changing for him at the time.

On his 50 Cent and Bas collaboration ‘New York Times’, Cole imagines an ideal world before acknowledging the harsh reality that black people often only appear in news stories for their deaths and the myth of ‘black-on-black crime’.

This legendary J. Cole lyric is simple, funny, and iconic, stating the obvious in such an articulate fashion.

Once again, it's only the very best bars from J. Cole. Talk about the best J Cole lyrics.

In a sea of the best J Cole lyrics, this one stands out because of his next-level storytelling skills. His career comes off as an epoch in this particular bar.

In this iconic batch of J Cole lyrics, the rapper speaks on socio-economic themes in society, and does so accurately and eloquently.

To cap off our list of J Cole lyrics, we've got his bar from "Let Nas Down," where he demonstrates his high level of respect for hip-hop and the greats that set the bar so high for today's rappers.