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J. Cole, who was recently on the road (literally) promoting his latest album, The Fall-Off, is going back on another road trip: as a professional basketball player with the Chinese Basketball Association.
According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the rapper, born Jermaine Cole, has signed a deal to play for the Nanjing Monkey Kings.
The rapper, who had committed to playing a few games for the Monkey Kings last year, will follow through on that commitment.
Cole, who played on his high school team in North Carolina, played in the Basketball Africa League in 2021 for the Rwanda Patriots. The next year, the 2014 Forest Hills Drive rapper signed to play in the Canadian Elite Basketball League with the Scarborough Shooting Stars.
Cole has had a more accomplished career dropping beats than dropping dimes. He won a Grammy in 2020 for Best Rap Song (“A Lot” by 21 Savage featuring J. Cole) and has several BET Hip Hop Awards. He also has six platinum albums and has produced songs for artists, including Kendrick Lamar, Janet Jackson and Young Thug.
The rapper decided to return to his musical roots when he was an up-and-coming artist in North Carolina, when he started selling his CDs from his trunk. When he went back on the road last year, he used the same Honda Civic (with a newly installed engine) in 2007. That’s when he released his first mixtape, The Come Up.
“Today I got my old Civic (with the brand new engine), a tour bus, and some sprinters. In the trunk of my car is boxes of The Fall-Off CDs. As a teenager, I had copies of the Fayettenam Bommuh’s album that Nervous gave me to sell. I used to go up to the gas stations trying to sell the album to strangers, “Yo, you like hip hop??” Was the beginning of the sales pitch.”
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