Justin Bieber didn’t just record a chart-topping duet with The Kid LAROI — according to the Australian rapper, Justin also taught him how to get in touch with his softer, more vulnerable side.

LAROI says he met Justin when he went over to his house to play basketball with friends. “They were so positive and so loving and so open and so vulnerable, and I wasn’t used to that,” he tells Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1.

“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.’ … that’s not how I played basketball with my friends.”

“I remember leaving there and just being like, ‘Whoa.’ I just remember being just jarred,” LAROI says. He describes the experience as “something that, over time, I’ve picked up and I’ve implemented into my own life because of [Justin].”

“As we kept hanging out … just the way he was able to showcase his vulnerability and open up to me … 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,” says LAROI, who notes that he’s been doing “a lot of therapy and stuff” lately.

LAROI intimated that the lessons he’s learned from Justin are now coming out in his music.

“I think I’m in a place where I’m making so much stuff that I do think is really good, with a lot of thought and meaning — more thought and meaning than it ever has been before,” he says. “More vulnerable, I think, than it’s ever been.”

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