The NBA star Lil Wayne compared himself to: “Just like him”
As one of the most successful rappers of his generation, Lil Wayne has the right to compare himself to some of the greatest basketball players of all time. Despite having many legends to choose from, Weezy picked out an NBA star who is still in the league after 21 years.
Sitting down for an interview in 2023, Wayne once revealed he saw similarities between himself and LeBron James. He claimed that people still want music from him after two decades, in the same way that NBA fans still want to see LeBron on the court.
“I would say that I’m like a LeBron,” he told Bleacher Report. “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.”
He added, “You remember Tom Brady, it was every year, even though he was winning the Super Bowl and all that, it still was, ‘Is this the year he’s gonna retire?’ We don’t even say that about LeBron, we don’t want you to retire. That’s how I feel when people ask when Tha Carter VI coming out. Like, ‘God damn it, that’s six of ’em. And they still want it?’”
Wayne has released five albums in his Tha Carter series since 2004, but his fans still want more. Following Tha Carter V in 2018, he recently revealed that he was working on Tha Carter VI. “I just want you to know that, I just never finished,” he said on Instagram. “I’m lying, I’m working on Carter 26. I think you already know that.”
LeBron has four NBA championships to his name across a storied career with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat and Los Angeles Lakers, winning MVP in each of the NBA Finals. Wayne once claimed that LeBron was the greatest basketball ever when asked to pick between him, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
“I don’t know Bron personally so my answer for Bron would be from afar,” he told All the Smoke. “My answer for Bron is on the court. Bron, you gotta remember, I know for a fact I loved Jordan for the way he always won. As a kid, you don’t know too much about the ins and outs of the game.”
Speaking on Jordan’s two three-peats, he said, “I got old enough to know how hard it is to fucking do it back-to-back-to-back. So that’s where he got his respect with me, and started getting his respect with me to where he’s the greatest. It’s very hard to do, and that n*gga Bron did that shit with three different teams.”
He added, “That right there… 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. That right there is what tipped him over the Jordan scale for me.”