John Legend Clarifies Comments About Not Being Close Friends With Kanye: I Don’t Want This To Sound Like I’m Disowning Him

October 31, 2019 by C.J. in Music with 0 Comments

Kanye West, John Legend

John Legend Clarifies Comments About Not Being Close Friends With Kanye: I Don’t Want This To Sound Like I’m Disowning Him

John Legend is clarifying his previous statements about his friend Kanye West.

John Legend was under fire after he seemed to claim he and Kanye West weren’t close friends amid the rapper’s controversial support for President Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, Kanye West (circa 2016)

John Legend previously said,

“I’m not trying to disown Kanye because I still love him and love everything we’ve done together creatively. But we were never the closest of friends.”

“I think what was always challenging about it was Kanye has never been political. I don’t think he knows one way or another what policies of Trump’s he likes. He just kind of embraced Trump’s blow-it-all-up spirit and the energy of himself being countercultural in supporting him.”

John Legend and his wife Chrissy Teigen also dished on Kanye West’s wife, Kim Kardashian West, working closely with the White House to grant clemency for several inmates. Legend said,

“It’s a cheap win for [Trump]. But the people being granted clemency are real people with families. So even if the clemency is won through his celebrity-whore tendencies, it’s still helpful for that family and that person. At the same time, he’s locking kids in cages and he’s a terrible human being….”

Teigen added,

“To be able to go in there and put whatever you hate about him aside to do this greater good for this person? I don’t know if I could physically muster that smile and handshake.”

Now, Legend has taken to Twitter to explain. His comments about his friendship with West had nothing to do with Trump, but rather about how the two have dealt with grief in the past.

“I get why people want to make this a thing. But I was explaining to the reporter how I’ve seen people I love reacting to the deaths of their mothers. I was thinking specifically of my own mom, Chrissy’s mom and others.”

He added,

“Then she asked me if I was referring to Kanye as well after Dr West died. And I told her I wasn’t really in a position to say because while Kanye [and I] have a long friendship and have a made a lot of great music, we weren’t close on the level of confiding in each other about grief”

“As I said then, I don’t want this to sound like I’m trying to disown him now that we’ve publicly and privately disagreed about politics, etc. It was just clarifying that I had no private knowledge that equipped me to speculate on his grieving process and how that related to mine”