Jon B has expressed regret over past comments he made about a Chloe Bailey and Gunna collaboration that samples his 1997 hit, "They Don’t Know."
Stopping by The Breakfast Club for an interview that aired on Friday (November 14), the singer-songwriter brought up his initial reaction to the pair's 2022 song "You & Me," and how he'd actually like to work with Baley.
"Come collaborate with me for real," Jon said (around the 55-minute mark in the video below). "Let me have a chance to really work with you. She’s so incredibly talented that I just don’t feel like that showed the real, what I want to see."
"It worked for what they did for it. It was just like a joint to put out — and I don’t know if I can really get behind that and say I liked that joint," Jon continued. "Now, I feel bad about saying that."
The R&B hitmaker, who has worked with the likes of 2Pac, Jay-Z, Michael Jackson and many others, initially shared his feelings about "You & Me" on the Can We Talk R&B? Podcast in 2024, calling it a "ratchet record."
"I wish they never did [that]," he added. "[They] actually never got my rights to do that record, either, so Gunna we gotta holler about that. ... That's some business shit we got to handle.
"You know what? It's all a compliment to what we did. That's [producers and co-songwriters] Tim [Kelley] and Bob's [Robinson] compliment, that's my compliment, but at the same time my lane is my lane and my area is my area and I earned that."
Jon continued: "If you made a hit in your area, you do your song whatever it is, I'm not going to just come into your area take your joint, and make it mine and not pay you or whatever."
Bailey went on The Breakfast Club afterwards and responded to Jon B’s criticism of the song in a classy manner. "Jon B is an incredible artist," she said. "If that song didn't exist, we couldn’t sample it. I love what Gunna and I did to it, and I’m sad he feels that way but hey, everyone has an opinion."
Jon B later revealed the he regretted his initial reaction when speaking on the Shirley’s Temple podcast, chalking it up to not being familiar with being on podcasts.
"It hurt me because I was like, 'Man, that could be my daughter right there,'" he said, explaining that as a father of two daughters, aged 11 and 17, and a husband of 18 years, there’s a "respect factor" and "a lot of chivalry" in his household. "It hit different because I never wanna come off like a hater."
