John Legend Clarifies Comments About Not Being ‘Close Friends’ W/ Kanye West

John Legend has clarified the recent remarks he made, where he said that he and Kanye West were never close friends.

“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,” Legend tweeted.

He continued, “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 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.”

Social media went haywire over the following comments from Legend:

“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.”