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John Legend Explains Saying He & Kanye West Were “Never The Closest Of Friends”

By: Yohance Kyles (@HUEYmixwitRILEY)Category: News

The left-leaning singer and the right-leaning rapper have conflicting political views.

(AllHipHop News) John Legend took to Twitter to clarify some comments attributed to him. The R&B pianist was quoted discussing his longtime musical collaborator Kanye West.

“I’m not trying to disown Kanye because I still love him and love everything we’ve done together creatively,” Legend told Vanity Fair about the G.O.O.D. Music founder. “But we were never the closest of friends.”

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That revelation about their personal relationship made its way into headlines across the internet. Legend then posted a series of tweets explaining his statement about West.

The EGOT winner wrote:

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. 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.

Legend released his debut album, Get Lifted, via the G.O.O.D. Music label in 2004.  The project included production by Kanye West. The two musicians also collaborated on records such as Legend’s “It’s Over,” West’s “Blame Game,” DJ Khaled’s “Grammy Family,” Slum Village’s “Selfish,” and Consequence’s “Whatever You Want.”

After West publicly back Donald Trump and the divisive “Make America Great Again” movement in 2018, Legend declared that the Republican’s brand of politics was an “embrace of white supremacy.” The supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren also referred to Kanye’s 2016 Trump Tower meeting with the then-President-Elect as a “publicity stunt.”