J. Cole's Manager Goes Into Detail About "Deja Vu" Sample Situation

When J. Cole's number one album 4 Your Eyez Only dropped earlier this month, fans were surprised to hear the beat to "Deja Vu" sound nearly identical to Bryson Tiller's 2015 hit, "Exchange." The producers of the Cole track, Boi-1da and Vinylz, would go on to call out Foreign Teck, who produced the latter, accusing him of stealing their idea to sample K.P. and Envyi's 1998 track “Swing My Way" after hearing them do it, though he denied the claims.

Neither Tiller nor Cole addressed the situation, but now Cole's manager, Ibrahim "Ib" Hamad, opened up about it all in a new interview with Billboard.

“I wouldn’t say there was any hesitation because I felt like it’s just two totally different songs. We had already made 'Déjà Vu,' like that song was literally made for his last album [2014 Forest Hills Drive] and we just knew it would fit better because of the story he wanted to tell on the album,” Ib said in regards to deciding to keep it on the album. “Cole had already made the song, so when Bryson’s album came out and we heard it, it was a feeling like, ‘Damn, he used the same sample.’ But to Cole, it don’t matter. He’s not competing with Bryson. What Bryson’s song did was incredible, and to Cole, it was like, ‘It’s a part of the story I want to tell, so I’m gonna use [the beat].’ We didn’t really know the backstory at the time of what happened with Vinylz and Boi1da and [ForeignTeck] who made the beat. That was none of our concern.”

Ib also explained why "False Prophets" was not included, despite it being released on the documentary that Cole put out just before the album dropped:

“The album was initially like 13, 14 songs and then just at the last second, we kind of were like, ‘Look, if we’re trying to tell a story, let’s just make it as clear as possible and cut it down to that.’ So when we cut out ‘False Prophets’ and ‘Everybody Dies,’ it really hurt. We really wanted [the songs] on the album and it was like we still wanted people to hear it but we didn’t want to put the music out because we knew it wasn’t a real representation of the album.”

You can read the full interview over at Billboard.