“Love you BROski”: Justin Bieber responds as The Kid Laroi shows support for his upcoming album ‘SWAG’

Justin Bieber is accepting The Kid Laroi's love and giving it back.

The Kid Laroi took to his Instagram Stories to share the announcement of the Canadian singer's forthcoming album, SWAG, as he declared to cut off anyone who won't be listening to it:

"if you don't listen to this album when it drops, we can't be friends. sorry I don't make the rules," he penned.

Bieber, who has since changed his Instagram username to @lilbieber, reposted the story and professed his love for his collaborator:

"Love you BROski.”

Justin Bieber's seventh studio album is going to drop on July 11 under Def Jam, insiders have told The Hollywood Reporter. While he has yet to confirm this himself, the singer has been teasing fans with posts and various billboards with the word “SWAG” across them, strewn across Reykjavik, Iceland, Times Square, New York, and Los Angeles.

According to Cosmopolitan, the album will feature 20 tracks, including “405,” “Swag,” “All I Can Take,” and “Dadz Love.” THR has reported that the artist worked on his album in Iceland, where he had jam sessions and collaborated with artists like DJ Tay James, HARV, Carter Lang, and Eddie Benjamin. Cosmopolitan has further reported that the forthcoming album will feature artists like Gunna, Sexyy Red, and Cash Cobain.

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Justin Bieber and The Kid Laroi's friendship explored as the latter credits the Canadian singer with helping him express vulnerability:

Back in February 2024, with the release of the Australian singer's Prime Video documentary Kids Are Growing Up: A Story About A Kid Named LAROI, The Kid Laroi, legally known as Charlton Kenneth Jeffrey Howard, opened up about his friendship and working with Justin Bieber:

“From the moment I met Justin, it was just all about positivity coming in here. No judgment zone, let’s all have fun,” he said in the documentary, before Bieber chimed in, “He plays me this song, ‘Stay,’ and it was him on it by himself. He was like, ‘I don’t think I’m gonna use it for my album.’ I was like, ‘Well, if you don’t use it, give it to me. I’ll use it. This is a great song.’”

In another scene in the documentary, Justin Bieber can be seen lying on the floor as he cheers his friend on:

“That’s a f—ing great song. You wrote that, bro. That’s f—ing sick!”

Justin Bieber and The Kid Laroi's track Stay spent seven consecutive weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. It also nabbed Top Hot 100 Song and Top Collaboration at the Billboard Music Awards in 2022. In April that year, the artist expressed a wish to work with Bieber again, noting that he would “love to do a part two" of Stay.

He “definitely didn’t expect it to be this big. It’s really cool, and everything’s kinda moving fast now. I’m just trying to figure out what the f— I do now," he said at the time.

In November 2023, he echoed his love for Justin Bieber as he credited him with being “more vulnerable” in his work. Recalling the first time he went to Bieber's house “to play basketball with him and his friends," he said,

“They were so positive and so loving and so open and so vulnerable, and I wasn't used to that. Even just the way I would grab the ball, and I'd miss a shot, and Justin would come pat me on the back and be like, ‘It's all good, bro. Next shot. You got that’ — and that's not how I played basketball with my friends.”

He added,

“It was so cool … I remember leaving there and just being like, ‘Whoa.’ I just remember being just jarred. And over time, as we kept hanging out and just the way he was able to showcase his vulnerability and open up to me, and that encouraged me to want to be more vulnerable and open up and want to own my feelings more and own the way I feel and how honest he is about who he is.”

He also said that Justin Bieber's vulnerability is indicative of his talent:

“And that is his thing. He is so honest about who he is and how he feels, even if — I mean whatever it is — he really owns that,” LAROI explained. “And I think that's something that I took and I was like, ‘Wow, that is so admirable.’ I saw the effect it had on me just being around that. And so I want to take that... I want to encourage that."

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