The Cost

Intro

I gave everything to that label.

Everything.

And they dropped me like I never existed.

Verse 1: J. Cole

Got the call on a Monday, felt the floor disappear —

everything I built for two years just vanished in the air.

They said the numbers wasn't there, said the timing wasn't right,

said we love your artistry but we can't keep the lights

on something that ain't moving — moving meaning profit,

profit meaning everything I poured in they could pocket

and still walk away clean like the deal never happened,

like the demos and the sessions and the sacrifice was rationed

out to nothing.

I sat in the car for an hour just staring,

thinking bout the floors I slept on, all the weight I been bearing —

thinking bout the homies that I left back in the Ville,

thinking bout the girl I lost, thinking bout the bill

I paid in people just to get to this moment —

and the moment just collapsed and took the whole thing with it.

Two years of my life and they erased it with a phone call,

two years of believing and they let me take the long fall

into silence.

And the silence was the loudest thing I ever heard —

louder than the music, louder than every single word

I wrote at 3am when the dream was still alive,

louder than the hunger that I used to feel to survive —

just silence where the future was a minute ago,

just me in a parking lot with nowhere left to go

and everything I sacrificed sitting in the passenger seat

staring back at me.

Verse 2: J. Cole

Called my mama that same night, didn't know what to say,

told her I was fine and she knew different anyway —

she always knew, she got that thing that mothers carry,

that radar for the breaking even when you try to bury

it beneath the voice that says I'm good, I'm handling it —

she said Jermaine come home and something in me almost split

open right there on the phone cause home felt so far,

far meaning more than miles, far meaning every scar

I got from chasing this was pointing back to Fayetteville

and everything I left to come up here and take this hill

that just got taken from me.

But I didn't go home.

Couldn't go home.

Going home meant the dream was done

and the dream was the only thing I had left after everyone

and everything had gone — gone meaning the label,

gone meaning the homies, gone meaning every table

I sat at thinking this was finally it this time —

I picked the pen back up and started writing every line

like it was the last line I'd ever get to write,

like the parking lot was the stage and I had one more night

to say everything that needed saying before the dark came —

and the dark came.

And I was still writing when it did.

Outro

They took the deal.

They couldn't take the hunger.

That's the difference.