John Legend Clears Up His Heavily Click-Baited Kanye West Comments

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John Legend Expands On His Kanye West Friendship Comments

John Legend took to Twitter on Wednesday night to clarify the comments he made about his longtime collaborator Kanye West in the December issue of Vanity Fair.

The singer made headlines this week for an excerpt from the interview where it really seems like he’s trying to distance himself from the controversial rapper.

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

Though John and his wife Chrissy Teigen are very vocal Democrats and Donald Trump haters, the couple never outwardly bashed Kanye for sporting a MAGA hat–which made these comments from Legend surprising. We know Teigen and Kim Kardashian are super close friends, and we’ve seen Ye collaborate with John both professionally and hang out on their off time–so where did this dismissal of their friendship come from?

A lot of fans criticized John for trying to distance himself from an associate once everyone had turned on him, but according to the singer, that’s not what went down at all. After a few days of backlash, Legend got on Twitter to make himself clear and provide context for his Kanye comments.

John clarifies that he was speaking with the Vanity Fair reporter about watching people he loves reacting to the deaths of their mothers–when she asked about Kanye losing his mom Donda, that’s when Legend mentioned not being close enough friends to know intimate details about West’s grieving process.

With this explanation, John Legend’s comments certainly make a lot more sense and prove just how much context matters when telling a story. The singer trying to be respectful in not speaking about someone else’s grief turned into him disowning a friend–so it’s easy to see why he wanted to clear that up.