J. Cole is spending early 2026 showing hip-hop fans in the millennial and older generations that you’re only as old as you feel.

Cole, 41, is returning to professional basketball, reportedly signing a deal with the Chinese Basketball League’s Nanjing Monkey Kings. Although he’s played professionally before in Canada and Africa, the move, originally reported by ESPN’s Shams Charania late on April 1, surprised some fans so much that they debated whether it was an April Fools' Day prank on social media.

But a video that circulated on social media on Thursday purportedly showed Cole already practicing with the team and signing autographs.

Despite the skepticism, the news that Cole would play in China this season wasn’t unexpected. Last year, Cole said he was committed to playing overseas in 2026, although it was unclear when. He had two previous stints playing professional basketball. A 6-foot-3 guard, Cole played in the NBA’s Basketball Africa League in 2021. That league’s website didn’t have stats available for his time there.

The following year, Cole appeared in five games for the Canadian Elite Basketball League’s Scarborough Shooting Stars, scoring a total of 12 points in 46.4 minutes on the floor. Cole isn’t the first famous rapper to take a shot at professional basketball. No Limit Records founder Master P, whose real name is Percy Miller, played on the preseason rosters of the Charlotte Hornets and Toronto Raptors in the late ‘90s and also played with the Continental Basketball Association’s Fort Wayne Fury.

Basketball wasn’t J. Cole’s only return to a youthful pursuit in 2026. In February, he dropped The Fall Off, a critically acclaimed album that was his first since 2021’s The Off-Season. It was his seventh studio release in a rap career that stretched back to his 2011 debut, Cole World: The Sideline Story.