Their potatoes may be mashed, but their beef is not squashed.
John Legend responded to former collaborator Kanye West’s bizarre mashed potatoes diss while appearing on Hot 97’s “Ebro in the Morning” radio show this week.
“He was very obsessed with me wearing sweaters. He was very obsessed with the sweaters, and he said I smelled like mashed potatoes,” Legend, 46, recalled as he wondered, “What kind of potatoes? Cheesy, garlic?”
In a troubling March interview with DJ Akademiks, West — who wore a Ku Klux Klan outfit, complete with the hate group’s infamous pointed hood — ranted, “Look at John Legend’s old sissy ass. I ain’t never do nothing wrong to that n—a. I changed generations of his life. And he got on that f—-t ass hot sweater. They said he smells like mashed potatoes.”
When “Ebro in the Morning” co-host Peter Rosenberg asked Legend whether any of the comments “offended” him or made him “sad,” the singer-songwriter lamented that “all of it makes [him] sad. All of it.”
“Not for me, though,” he clarified, “because obviously, I smell great.” Rosenberg confirmed that Legend smells “fantastic.”
“It never affects me personally, but the whole story is sad,” the R&B musician elaborated.
“Like, seeing this guy praise Hitler, seeing this guy be this force of hate and vitriol and nastiness. Somebody who has made some of the great art of this century as an artist, as a performer, as a fashion designer. All the things that he’s done to make the world more beautiful and more interesting and then for him to be this now is sad. It’s just sad.”
The “All of Me” hitmaker insisted he “never saw this side of [West] that was obsessed with Hitler” and that he “truly” had “no idea” the rapper, 48, felt this way.
“I have friends that I talk about politics with all the time; he was never one of them,” Legend explained.
“So I never thought of him as a person that thought about who was president or any of these social and cultural issues. He just never talked about it in conversation.”
Thinking back to the West he once knew, Legend let out fondly, “What a time, what a time.”
Asked to describe the “old Kanye,” with whom he collaborated on several tracks, the “Green Light” chart-topper replied, “He was full of so much energy and creativity and optimism.”
Legend shared that he and the fellow Grammy winner “really believed [they] were starting a new movement in music,” noting that “being a part of that was inspiring” and “thrilling.”
“That’s why it’s sad now because we did amazing things together as a collective,” he said, making sure to stress, “I have no regrets because even though he’s gone completely left now, I’m so glad we did what we did together.”
Reps for West did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.