Meet Cole Bennett, who’s dating Leonardo DiCaprio’s ex – again? The go-to music video director for Justin Bieber and Drake is rumoured to be dating Camila Morrone – and was once linked to Gigi Hadid

He’s the founder of Lyrical Lemonade, a hip-hop blog-turned-multimedia company, and has launched his own independent music festival called Summer Smash, the 2024 edition of which was headlined by Chief Keef, Playboi Carti and artists from Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack label. Lyrical Lemonade also just dropped a compilation album, All is Yellow, featuring 34 artists including Eminem, Lil B, Lil Durk, Kid Cudi, Chief Keef and Juicy J.

But now he’s making the headlines for his dating life.

Interestingly, last year, Bennett sparked romance rumours with another one of DiCaprio’s exes, Gigi Hadid. Hadid is now reportedly dating Bradley Cooper.

So what else do we know about this young music genius?

What is Cole Bennett’s background?

Bennett grew up in Plano, Illinois, an hour outside Chicago. He moved to Chicago 10 years ago.

Growing up in a small town had its effects on Bennett’s creativity: he revealed on Our Generation Music that it allowed his “imagination to really flourish and just expand” and forced him to “think outside the box”, as there wasn’t much to do in the “bare-bones” town.

He created Lyrical Lemonade

With a love for storytelling, Bennett launched Lyrical Lemonade as a passion project at 17, per Billboard. It started out as a blog where he would write about “new local talent that wasn’t being covered”. Soon, he was at a crossroads between journalism and videography. He opted to drop out of college and pursue his blog full-time, which ultimately made Lyrical Lemonade what it is today.

Bennett is also expanding the brand with the launch of a canned beverage line called Drink Lyrical.

He wants to make films next

In the past decade of Lyrical Lemonade, Bennett has directed 500 music videos. Now, he’s taking a step back to give himself “the space to become a student again”, he said in an Instagram Reel. He announced on his Instagram that, for the next chapter of his career, he wants to focus on “storytelling in all different mediums, specifically feature films”. He had previously told Billboard that making films was one of his dreams.

He will be introducing new music video directors into the fold of Lyrical Lemonade, or as he calls it, LL 2.0. While he will still be directing music videos himself, the number will be limited to a few a year. Nevertheless, he promises to “make them very special”.

He had a fight with Kanye West

Bennett worked with Ye on YNW Melly’s music video for “Mixed Personalities”. However, the process was far from smooth. Bennett revealed on the Full Send Podcast that the “Heartless” singer requested the colour palette of the music video be changed to black and white the night before its release. This caused a “texting war” – but Bennett stuck with Melly’s original vision. He doesn’t have any hard feelings though, saying that he appreciated Ye’s “self-integrity element of knowing what he likes and what’s true to, you know, his artistry”.