Omar Sterling's "haven't prayed in 20 years" interview was recorded months before his father's funeral

R2Bees, the Tema duo of Omar Sterling and Mugeez, rarely give interviews. Their 53-minute appearance on Real Talk, a podcast by NandoLeaks recorded in Amsterdam, went up on YouTube around 18 to 19 October 2026. It was their first interview in years, and within two days it had about 52,000 views.

Most of the attention went to Omar Sterling's comments on religion, including his statement that he has not prayed in 20 years. Many reactions on X mocked him.

A date inside the tape

Near the end of the interview, one of the duo says "we're 69 years today". Ghana became independent on 6 March 1957, so its 69th anniversary fell on 6 March 2026. That places the recording on Independence Day, more than seven months before its release. NandoLeaks has not stated the recording date. This is a deduction from the tape.

Omar Sterling's father, known as Papa Watch, was laid to rest in Tema on 11 October, Yen reported. Adom Online reported Islamic funeral prayers. Mugeez, King Promise, Mr Drew, Darkovibes and Killbeatz were among those who attended, according to Yen. The interview came out about a week later.

Why it landed hard

In the interview the duo talk about Tema, ten years underground from about 1998, and the 2007 song Yawa Girl that broke them in 2008. They say they were the first artists from Tema to blow up.

According to the 2021 census, about 71 per cent of Ghanaians are Christian and about 20 per cent Muslim. Only 1.1 per cent said they had no religion.

Old ideas

The ON RECORD episode traces Omar Sterling's ideas to older traditions inside Islam and Christianity. In Baghdad, the Sufi mystic Mansur al-Hallaj declared "Ana al-Haqq", meaning "I am the Truth", al-Haqq being one of the names of God. He was imprisoned for years and executed in 922. Scholars still debate how far his death was about theology and how far about politics.

On death, Omar Sterling quoted a line he attributed to the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi. The language of tasting death echoes the Quran: "Every soul shall taste death" appears in chapter 3, verse 185. The Quran also describes God as closer to a person than their jugular vein.

He also echoed the saying that people are spiritual beings having a human experience. That line is popularly credited to a French Jesuit priest, though it has not been found word for word in his writings.

If the date in the tape is right, he spoke about death in March, months before his father's funeral.