John Legend says it is “sad, sometimes shocking” to look now at his former collaborator Kanye West, who played an instrumental role in Legend’s musical breakthrough 20 years ago.
The pair worked together on Legend’s breakthrough album Get Lifted, with West handling the executive production as well as co-producing the album alongside Dave Tozer, will.i.am and Devo Springsteen. Legend was signed to West’s GOOD Music label, and the latter also appeared on the album, which went on to sell three million copies, win three Grammy Awards and make Legend’s name as an artist.
West was already a star himself with his hit album The College Dropout. 20 years later, Legend has described West during that fertile creative period as “passionate, gifted and had big dreams for himself and the people around him.”
Legend told The Times of London: “He had so much optimism, so much creativity. It does feel sad, sometimes shocking, to see where he is now.”
West has encountered widespread controversy in recent years, from selling T-shirts adorned with swastika logos to wearing a black Klu Klux Klan hood in public. He has previously been banned from the platform X for some of his offensive statements.
Legend told The Times: “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 suggested the death of West’s mother in 2007 was instrumental in his shift of focus: “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.”
Get Lifted, which Legend is now taking on tour to mark its 20th anniversary contained songs about infidelity, and harked back to Motown classics.
“I was 25 when the album was made and I was experiencing life as a young man, a young bachelor… I had cheated, and felt guilty about it, but I dramatized real events to make them more romantic or thrilling. She Don’t Have to Know is a soap opera. I don’t think my life was ever that interesting.”
