The REAL Reason J.Cole Replaced Andre 3000 in Beyonce’s “Party”
Beyonce’s video for “Party” dropped on Wednesday and since then, some fans have been critical of her choice to include J. Cole in the video version, instead of Andre 3000, who was featured on the CD version. Yahoo Music came up with a list of the 4 most probable reasons why Beyonce decided to “replace” Andre 3000 with J. Cole.
#1. Andre’s 50 second verse was just too long for the video. J. Cole’s verse is only 24 seconds.
#2. Beyonce couldn’t get label permission to use Andre in the video. It has also been hard for other artists to gain permission to use him.
#3. Andre didn’t want to be in the video.
#4. Since J. Cole is her hubby Jay-Z’s protégé, Beyonce decided to give him the some of her ultimate shine to help boost his publicity.
According to a recent interview J. Cole did with Hot106 Rise and Grind, choice #1 might be the correct answer. When asked about his replacement verse for the song, J. Cole explained:
“[My version] is officially the remix. I did 2 verses for it before her album even came out. But they ended up going with Andre, and Andre killed it, of course. And then she reached out to me and told me she wanted me to get on the remix. I did 2 more verses. She picked the first one. So the second one, I just gotta save it for my album. It was just too long, I think she was looking for something shorter and more to the point. But it’s just a blessing to be able to work with Beyonce. Because, you know, when you follow in Andre 3000’s shoes you’re expected to really go in. But just to even be on the song with her, and then to shoot that video with her, and to just be in her presence [is great]. She’s such a hard working and incredible artist. I’ll never forget that day we shot the video. And I’ll never forget being able to be on that song. Hopefully there’ll be more as time goes on.”
So it appears that J. Cole didn’t Replace Andre 3000, he just simply did the Remix. Not to mention, he did confirm that Beyonce was looking for a short, straight to the point verse, rather than a longer one, for the video’s purposes. Either way, I enjoyed J. Cole’s verse and the entire video. What’d you think?
Here’s the video clip to view his response for yourself. He starts talking about the song at the 1 minute mark.