Romeo has clarified his comments after he caught some flak for comparing himself to Kobe Bryant during his appearance on Soulja Boy and Bow Wow’s Verzuz.
During the recent Verzuz event, Romeo made a guest appearance and suggested he was the Kobe Bryant to Bow Wow’s Michael Jordan and Soulja Boy’s LeBron James. The comparison instantly raised eyebrows among some viewers, who questioned the comparison. In an interview on Fox Soul’s The Mix, Romeo has clarified what he meant and stressed that people shouldn’t have taken his words so literally.
“Man, the internet, you damned if you do damned if you don’t. No disrespect to none of those legends, you know there’s only one Michael Jordan, there’s only one Kobe, there’s only one LeBron,” he explained. “I was saying, in our era, when I came out Bow was the first to do it, right? Which means he was like the MJ. When I came, I was that young hard-working kid who had to be the most talented. I worked my butt off, I was in the studio 24/7, and I made my own history. Kobe-ish.”
Regarding his LeBron-Soulja comparison, he remarked how they both shook up their respective fields when they made their major debuts. “Soulja Boy is just the innovator, the one who did it differently. We never seen nothing like it,” he said. “And that’s your era. I didn’t say the whole music game, I’m not saying I’m the Kobe of hip-hop or nothing like that. I walked away from music. Once I accomplished my goal of having a No. 1 single and being the rap artist of the year, I was like, I wanna move on to the next.”
He suggested that if he had to name rap’s equivalents for all three of the NBA greats he listed, he said Jay-Z would be MJ’s equivalent. “I see Lil Wayne as the Kobe Bryant. I think Lil Wayne is the hardest worker in hip-hop,” he continued. “He’s literally the GOAT. I think LeBron would be Drake, if I said literally.”
As for his comments regarding Derrick Rose, who he said identified with more, he added, “No disrespect to D Rose but I think you gotta put yourself on a high pedestal if you wanna succeed in anything.” He also warned the internet to not take “everything so literal,” explaining he had met with Kobe multiple times throughout his life and he remains one of his biggest idols. Despite that, he shared that he got death threats for the comparison, which he maintains people misinterpreted.
“In no shape or form was I saying I’m the literal Kobe of rap and music,” he stressed. “It was just of that era, whether that era was for one month, one year, two years, or ten years… Just our little era that we had, and it was just me trying to get my roses of saying that Bow, you kinda inspired so many of us that came after.”
Watch Romeo explain his Verzuz comments on The Mix above.
