John Legend Talks Kanye West Tweets: ‘It Was A Little Surreal’

“All of Me” singer John Legend found himself embroiled in a social media discussion after Kanye West posted the text messages he sent him.

Legend’s messages came after West unabashedly tweeted about his support for President Donald Trump. Legend first shared his thoughts on Twitter, and he later told West in a text message that he had to be careful about his posts because they are hurting the majority of his fans.

Little did he know that West would turn their private conversation into a public one.

“It was a little surreal,” Legend now told Billboard about West’s tweets. “I didn’t expect it to happen in that way, the whole thing was unexpected. But I just told him what I believed and what I thought he should think about. He has a lot of people that listen to what he says and his platform is powerful, so I just wanted him to use that power in a way that was responsible and aware of what’s happening in the world.”

After that incident, West generated even more criticisms after he said in an interview with TMZ Live that 400 years of slavery was a “choice.”

He said: “When you hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years? That sound like a choice. Like, you was there for 400 years, and it’s all of y’all? It’s like we’re mentally in prison. I like the word ‘prison’ because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks. It’s like, slavery — holocaust. Holocaust — Jews, slavery is blacks. Prison is something that unites us as one race - blacks and whites being one race.”

TMZ staffer Van Lathan decided then that it was time for his round of “free thought,” so he fired back at the rapper. “I actually don’t think you’re thinking anything. I think what you’re doing right now is actually the absence of thought,” he told Kanye.

“While you are making music and being an artist and living the life that you've earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives,” Lathan said. “We have to deal with the marginalization that’s come from the 400 years of slavery that you said for our people was a choice.”