Photo Credit: Wesley Mann via Billboard.com

J.Cole recently chopped it up with Billboard for an exclusive discussion about today’s entertainment world and politics. During the one-on-one interview, J.Cole shared his thoughts on social media, the past presidential election, his FaceTime conversation with XXXTentation before he passed, and his thoughts on the current “SoundCloud Generation”.

Read some of the highlights from the Billboard interview below. To check out the full interview, click here.

What keeps you from sharing your opinions on Twitter?
If I’m in a conversation with somebody and it’s natural and it’s organic, I’m going to speak freely. But rarely do I feel the need to hop on Twitter or social media and chime in, especially on rap and music shit. This shit is not real. This shit is fucking fake. This shit is high school. This shit is fucking celebrity worship. In college, we had this running joke that all our meetings of the Black Student Union — that I ended up becoming president of, but I was just a member my freshman and sophomore years — always eventually ended up talking about Jay-Z. No matter what black topic, social issue or community shit we was talking about, somebody brought up fucking Jay-Z. It never failed.

Celebrity drama is one thing, but what about serious matters like politics?
I might not be on Twitter at that time. I might not be in the mode of confidently expressing my opinions via text. I speak better from the heart, out loud. And when it really moves me, I’ll do it. But politics really doesn’t interest me anymore. I try to stay as far away from politics as possible.

How so?
I don’t click the links. The headlines are enough. I understand there is a segment of politics where you have people — and this is the part I respect — who truly are trying to use it as a tool for change, and they devote their life to grassroots voter registration and shit like that. They’re living a life that’s unselfish. But the politics we’re talking about [slaps table] is Trump headlines.

….

Did you vote in 2016?
No, I didn’t.

Why not?
Because Hillary Clinton wasn’t somebody that was motivating me to go vote. If it was Bernie Sanders, I would’ve showed up and voted. I would’ve been the first one in line, no bullshit. No disrespect to Hillary.

…

Bringing it back to music: You’re famously averse to features and outside producers. Would experimenting with a camp and opening up your creative process ever appeal to you?
No, never. Being collaborative, yes, but being ultra collaborative, nah. I don’t want “Give me your best song” and pick from them. I don’t even have a lot of rapper friends.

Do you ever feel like you’re out of step with your peers?
I don’t look at it as they’re running left and I’m running right. I’m following my inspiration and where that’s going to lead me.

Your criticisms were fair, but some people saw “1985” as finger wagging. Do you think the song came down too hard on the SoundCloud generation?
I don’t look at it as being harsh. I look at it as being a rap response record. It’s not even to someone [specific]; it’s a group of people who were on some “Fuck J. Cole” shit, which, when I started peeking my head back into what was going on, was a shock. But even while I made the song, I was fucking with these kids. I was a fan. I was riding around playing Lil Pump just because I wanted to understand what it was, and the more I understood, it was like, “Damn.” I was writing that song from a place of, like, smacking your little brother. I still love you, but I’ma smack you.