In an interview with Elliott Wilson and Brian 'B.Dot' Miller on the Rap Radar podcast, Burna Boy said that J. Cole favorably compared him to 2Pac during a studio session.
"I don’t really know the dynamics behind how everything happened, but somehow I end up in the studio with J. Cole and a bunch of basketball players—tall as hell,” he laughed. “And then yeah, before any music, we were just all talking about real stuff, about life and everything really. ... I don’t really have conversations with people that don’t really live with me and stuff like that. I don’t have them long conversations like that. So for me, I found myself going off."
He said at one point during the conversation between them, Cole made the comparison to Pac. "He just goes, ‘Bruh, this n***a’s 2Pac.’ And then I look around to see who he’s talking about, and it’s me he’s talking about!" he continued. "Like, ‘Yeah, this n***a is—it’s like 2Pac reincarnated in Africa and shit.’ [I was like], ‘Damn, that’s kinda deep. Alright, let’s make some music.'”
Burna Boy and J. Cole recently teamed up on the former's seventh studio album I Told Them... for the song "Thanks." On the track, Cole compares himself to Kobe Bryant and Burna Boy to Shaquille O'Neal. “Cole and Burna, Shaq and Kobe," he raps on the song. "Winnin’ a ring, then we gon’ repeat and three-peat."
As he explained in his 360 with Speedy interview, the two worked on a different track when they had a studio session together. "We did get in the studio but we didn't make 'Thanks' that day," he shared at the 12-minute point of the chat, as seen below. "We made something else." Cole sent him his verse for "Thanks" later down the line.
Recently, Burna Boy also described Cole as a "legend" during his interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music. "The truth is often hidden, you know, but when you come across it and you are a person of truth yourself, you can’t help but recognize it," he said at the 41-minute point of the interview, as seen below. "That’s really the story of me and J Cole. It’s like, I recognize it. That’s something I’ve always looked at, his settings, and thought, ‘Rah, that would be a nice, very conducive way to end up.’"
