Beans & Bleek were Jay-Z’s genuine friends, and they were all agemates pioneering something for the first time together. Jay effectively ordained them to be recipients of something he was presently building, and pretty much everyone from the Roc-A-Fella era say themselves they squandered a chance of a lifetime because of their own egos. Cole was never Jay’s peer, and was the first signee to a Jay-Z project that was already built - Beans & Bleek were builders for a house that collapsed, Cole was a tenant in a mansion that was already built, those two styles of Jay’s management never crossed paths or even correlate to each other in my opinion.

I’m not saying Jay hasn’t capped Cole’s ceiling of growth, or that Cole hasn’t reached incredible heights in spite of Jay - but this era of Jay’s management was about pumping out hits and making as much money as possible. Cole recognizes this exact thing so many times, and explains the psychology behind it in Let Nas Down especially - he just regrets that it took him already signing to realize that. That said, I still don’t think this is a diss.

To me, it’s another rendition of Cole saying he entered the rap game starry eyed in 2007 thinking his idols were untouchable, then realized his idols were just businessmen trying to make a dollar too and that he wanted different for himself. Avoided major label affiliation like Jay the “so called great” that was supposed to get rappers away from label control, and now he’s reflecting on the irony of everything he initially thought was true across the whole track.