Punch Recounts Story of J. Cole and Diddy’s 2013 VMAs Afterparty Fight

Punch once again recounted the heated fight between J. Cole and Diddy at an afterparty for the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards.

The 42-year-old TDE president, born Terrence Louis Henderson Jr., made an appearance on Saturday’s episode of the R&B Money Podcast where he was asked to participate in the “I Ain’t Saying No Names” segment. In the segment, the show’s guest is asked to tell a story that’s funny or “fucked up” on the condition that they can’t name any of the subjects involved.

“The homie just did this song, right? Piss the gang of people off. Everybody was mad at it,” Punch recalled at the 1:50:37 mark in the video above, referring to Kendrick Lamar’s verse on Big Sean's “Control” where he called himself “the King of New York, King of the Coast.”

“When the song came out, he was overseas, then he came back to the States,” he recalled. “First place we stopped in was New York City and the first thing we do is say, ‘Let's go to the club’ because we want to check the temperature, see what everybody was on—L.A. stuff.”

He continued, “We get to the club. One of the homies approached us and talking about this particular record. So we're going back and forth, ‘Oh, it's not personal. It's just this, this and that. It's cool, whatever, whatever.’”

“Another one of the homies walk up, he look drunk [and] said, ‘Yeah, y'all n***as need to go back and forth and keep it on wax or whatever, whatever, whatever.’ So the two dudes who approached, they get into a little back and forth, little argument with each other now. What we didn't know is they got into an argument before we got there,” he added.

Punch recalled that things settled down and they moved into a celeb-filled VIP section reminiscent of “the front row of the Grammys.”

“The homie that got into it with the other one, he’s sitting two steps down from me on the couch,” Punch said. “Then they came back to him, the ones who got an alteration earlier. He was like, ‘Yeah, and if you ever say what you said to me earlier, n***a, I’ll—’ and he grabbed a bottle from the table cause he got all of the alcohol. And he said, ‘What you gon’ do? Hit me on my head with a bottle?’ ‘Like nah, I'm gonna break [it] on the table, I'm gonna cut your throat.’”

Punch then recalled that the confrontation between both men escalated into a scuffle that eventually led them to knock down a table full of drinks. After things settled down, both men were reportedly removed from the club.

“The ratio from celebrity to regular person was like 70-30 maybe,” Punch noted. “Every section was full of celebrities. Music people, movie people, whatever. It's like it never existed.”

However, Punch named names when discussing the incident during a 2022 episode of Math Hoffa’s My Expert Opinion podcast at the 59:52 mark linked here.

“[Jay-Z] and Puff is doing the dinner that they usually do. This whole thing, it was packed like 70-30 celebrities,” Punch said at the time. “Puff and Cole was talking about the verse, and they end up getting into a little back and forth. When we come in, Cole and Kendrick was talking about…the verse. Puff came back over and they argument sparked up again. So from there they ended up getting in the whole scuffle in the club.”

As far as who really won the fight, Punch says it was Emory Jones.

“Emory thought somebody was jumping on Jay. So he rushed over there, he got in the middle of the thing. He ended up grabbing Cole, like, ‘Oh, it’s Cole.’”

Multiple sources told Complex at the time that Diddy was “visibly intoxicated” and tried to confront K.Dot over the “King of New York” claim in his “Control” verse. J. Cole reportedly intervened when Diddy attempted to pour a drink on Kendrick when an argument ensued and the altercation escalated.

Since then, Cole referenced the fight on “Let Go My Hand” off his 2021 The Off-Season album, rapping, “My last scrap was with Puff Daddy, who would’ve thought it?/I bought that n***a album in seventh grade and played it so much/You would’ve thought my favorite rapper was Puff/Back then I ain’t know shit, now I know too much.”

Shortly after the song’s release, Cole’s manager Ibrahim “IB” Hamad insisted that the rapper wasn’t coming to Kendrick’s defense in the way it was portrayed in the media.

“You know, grown men. … Got a little heated,” Hamad told the Say Less podcast in 2021. “All I remember is, me and Jay looking at each other like, ‘Oh, these n***as ’bout to fight.’ And then just being like, ‘Oh no this is ’bout to happen.’ I’ll leave it at that.”

The following month, Cole and Diddy jokingly recreated their fight in a now-deleted Instagram post.

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