During an interview on SportsCenter, Lil Wayne stated that meeting LeBron James for the first time was one of the few times he had ever experienced being starstruck.
“I gotta say when I finally met Bron as LeBron James,” he said. “Because I met him when he was about, I think, 16. He came to a party, my boss at the time told me, he was like, ‘Yo, I need you to bring this kid with you to your show.’ And so the kid was LeBron, right? And to see him become who he was. And I remember just… I think it was a commercial we shot recently. I was on the set and just looking up at him and asking him about his son and the NBA. That was a huge full-circle moment for me. I don’t know about him, but for me, I was like, ‘What just happened?'”
Last year, Beats By Dre relaunched the Beats Pill and headphones brand with a new commercial campaign starring LeBron James and Lil Wayne. Around the time they shot the commercial, LeBron and his son Bronny became the first father-son teammates in the history of the NBA.
Weezy and Bron have known each other since before LeBron was drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2003, so they go way back. By the time he was playing for the Cavaliers, Lil Wayne performed at LeBron James’ 21st birthday party in 2005. In 2017, meanwhile, Wayne reunited with the Hot Boys for a Beats By Dre party hosted by Bron.
In an appearance on the All the Smoke podcast with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson two years ago, the 42-year-old rapper broke down why he firmly believes LeBron is the greatest basketball player of all time. “He ain’t got six, but he done it with three different teams. And not on one of those muthafuckin’ teams did he play role two,” Wayne said, comparing Bron’s championships to Michael Jordan’s two three-peats with the Chicago Bulls. “That right there is what tipped him over the Jordan scale for me.”
Wayne has also compared himself to LeBron in the past, too. When asked by Taylor Rooks about who he would compare himself to in the NBA, he immediately named Bron. “I would say that I’m like a LeBron,” Wayne said. “I dropped my first solo album when I was 14, and that’s the same album I’m talking about that went platinum. And I’ve been doing this at this pace of higher ever since, just like him.”
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