John Legend Says It's 'Sometimes Shocking' to See What Kanye West Has Become

Singer John Legend and rapper Kanye West were longtime friends and collaborators before having a falling out in recent years. Now, Legend is opening up a bit about their relationship with West seemingly constantly in the news for all the wrong reasons lately.

John Legend openly admits that he owes a lot of his breakthrough success to his relationship, as he explained in a recent interview with The Times.

“Kanye blew up after producing Jay-Z’s album The Blueprint in 2001,” Legend told The Times. “Then he experienced a buzz as a solo artist and the whole time I was travelling with him, doing shows with him, getting exposure not only as his singer and keyboard player but also as an artist myself. I had been turned down by labels everywhere. Then The College Dropout sold 400,000 copies in its first week, everyone wanted to know what was happening in our camp, and all those people who turned me down suddenly decided that my music sounded a lot better than it did the first time round.”

Now, however, the two are no longer friends with their first fallout occurring in 2022 when Kanye publicly expressed his support for Donald Trump. Since then the rift between them has grown as Kanye has made countless controversial statements and decisions.

Those recent antics include a flurry of antisemitic remarks, describing himself as a Nazi, selling swastica t-shirts, and wearing a black Ku Klux Klan shirt during a recent interview – and that's hardly a comprehensive list.

That is not the Kanye that John Legend knew all those years ago, and he admits it's "sometimes shocking" to see what the rapper has become.

“Back then Kanye was very passionate, very gifted, and he had big dreams not only for himself but also for all the people around him,” Legend said. “He had so much optimism, so much creativity. It does feel sad, sometimes shocking, to see where he is now.”

Legend didn't necessarily see this progression coming from his former friend, but he recognized that there was "definitely a difference" when his mother passed away.

“I didn’t see a hint of what we’re seeing now, his obsessions with antisemitism, anti-blackness, and it is sad to see his devolution,” Legend said. “I don’t think we’re qualified to psychoanalyse him, but after his mother passed in 2007 there was definitely a difference. His descent started then and seems to have accelerated recently.”

They were once very close, but they are now clearly on very different paths.