John Legend Says Kanye West Friendship Fell Apart Over Lack of Presidential Run Support: 'He Was Very Upset'

etonline.com:

John Legend is clearing the air about the political rift that ended his friendship with Kanye West. It was previously reported that the longtime friends and collaborators had struggled to see eye-to-eye regarding the 2020 presidential race and West's public support of Donald Trump.

Legend now says it was more personal than that. «What it got described as was, we stopped being friends because he supported Trump, which was a mischaracterization of what I said,» Legend says of the widespread reporting following an August appearance on  podcast with CNN's David Axelrod. «What I was saying was that he was very upset with me that I didn’t support  running for President, and that was the real impetus for us having a strain in our friendship.»The new remarks come via a wide-ranging interview with , published on Sept.

4 and conducted during Legend's recent family vacation in Lake Como, Italy. Legend says that, «I don't know what will happen in the future» regarding his relationship with West, which stems all the way back to working together on West's albums in the early 2000s. «He was very upset with me that I didn't support him and I supported Joe Biden,» Legend says. «It's up to him whether he can get past that.» He also addresses West's decision to make public private text messages that they had exchanged at the time of their disagreement in 2020. «Everyone saw how I talked to him about it.

I talked to him with love and with empathy, and tried to help him see another way of looking at things. And obviously he went the way he went with it,» Legend recalls. «The most frustrating thing about his run for the presidency for me was how much it was an operation run by the Trump campaign.