J. Cole opens up about his childhood and how he began to smoke cigarettes at the age of 6.
During a recent interview on ESPN’s Lead By Example with Bob Myers, Cole reveals, “at 6 years old, I was smoking cigarettes regularly around the neighborhood. I was always hanging around the older kids in the neighborhood,” he said. “They were smoking, and I was young and fearless and trying to be cool. So, it was like, ‘Oh, y’all smoking. Let me see that.”
His mother soon found out after his brother caught him and snitched. “She was like, ‘Say something. I was like, ‘What do you mean, say something?’ and when I said it she bent down, she smelled the cigarette smoke on my breath. After that, I didn’t need much correction, I became a self-corrector,” he continued. “That was the first time I became aware that, ‘Oh, my actions can hurt someone else.’”
Take a look at the clip below.