J. Cole talks to Nick Huff of Hard Knock TV about his thoughts on the Jay-Z & Beanie Sigel situation, being compared to Drake on MuchMusic TV in Toronto, and what impact mixtapes have in an artists career.

“Making music is art,” he continues. “It doesn’t change who you are as a person. It doesn’t mean you’re entitled or you’re above the law. You still treat people as human beings. It doesn’t change the laws of the universe. Life has a balance and for every action there is a reaction. So if you put negative energy in, negative energy comes back to you. You have to live your life within the laws of the universe and I haven’t lost sight of that.

It seems everyone is running with this Beanie vs Jay-Z thing….

“Beanie Sigel had a record deal,a record label and a clothing line and never went platinum. I don’t know in the history of rap has anyone done so much with so little. If that’s not pushing a person sh!t” – Jay-Z

Don’t get it f***ed up, this ain’t the green light for everyone to make a diss Jay-Z record. I still got love for the nigga, this is me taking my brother in the yard for 5 minutes. Cause I got a knot in my chest that needs to get unloosened. When you got love for a Mutha***** it don’t go away that easy, many people gonna walk in and out your life but only real friends leave footprints on your heart dog. But I think yours is fading in the sand.

Another one from Timbaland titled Rumors featuring Jay-Z and Keri Hilson, I like this one.

“Opened up the BET Awards, me and Jay-Z,” Jeezy said on set of Triple C’s and Rick Ross’ new video for “Erryday.” “Shouts out to the homie, man, he stopped through. He was on his way to another show. But that’s what we do. Real ones do real things. I just wanted to do something big for the city. Since the song is on both of our albums, we gonna shoot the video. It’s gonna be crazy. We said, ‘Let’s go ahead and break it in at the BET Awards.’ ”

At the Atlanta Civic Center, Young Jeezy — who often has high-profile guests to join him onstage — pulled off a huge move during the BET Hip-Hop Awards, kicking off the show by bringing out surprise guest Jay-Z. Hov and Young opened the show with “As Real As It Gets,” with the two hip-hop heavyweights going back and forth on verses. With the audience on their feet by song’s end, Jeezy said, “Welcome to Atlanta.”

The New York anthem, “Empire State of Mind” is already a national hit and now it gets a video clip in the scenery of the big Apple. Below are exclusive images from the video shoot and it looks promising.

“I would never do that, I would never have the nerve to do that.. I thought it was the equivalant to what Kanye did to Taylor Swift, but nobody really talked about that cuz I’m not a little sweet girl from Middle America… We worked really hard… People put in weeks to make that performance happen. If you look at those screens, we had to go to Yankee Stadium. We did rehersals, run-throughs… I was a little angry, yeah. But what I’ma do, fight Lil Mama?”