Kanye West & John Legend Are Friends Again, So Maybe We Can All Get Along?

Kanye West and John Legend assure us: there’s no bad blood there.

The two musicians met up at Chrissy Teigen’s surprise baby shower on Friday. It was just a few days after Legend reached out to West and asked the rapper to reconsider his outspoken support for President Donald Trump. (In the spirit of free thought, Kanye tweeted out screenshots of their text conversation.)

But yesterday Kanye tweeted a quick selfie with Legend saying, “We got love. Agree to disagree,” which Legend later retweeted. As you know, he also managed to drop two singles and we're still sorting out the fall out from those.

But while things seem to be patched up with Legend, the jury’s still out on the rest of the world. After months of near radio silence, West returned to Twitter nearly two weeks ago with a storm of bizarre philosophical tweets that he said was the start of a philosophy book “in real time” — but that got derailed after West’s increasingly controversial support of Trump became clear.

After tweeting out photos of a signed Make America Great Again hat and a “thank you” from the president himself, some of Hollywood’s elite, including Rihanna, Drake, and Legend, unfollowed West. (At press time, it looks like Legend re-followed West’s Twitter account.) Writer-director-comedian Jordan Peele hinted (jokingly) that West’s life could be the inspiration for Get Out 2 after the rapper made a few unfortunate references to “the sunken place.” Fellow Chicagoan and West protégé Chance the Rapper was also drawn into the mess, after an attempt to defend his mentor turned into an endorsement from Trump. (Chance has since tried to make it extremely 100% clear that he and Trump aren’t on the same page at all.)

Kim Kardashian West even had to step in to clear the air, calling on her husband to clarify his position on Trump and then later taking to Twitter herself, saying West’s tweets aren’t related to his mental health but just an artist expressing an opinion.

Which begs the question: in 2018, where nearly everything we touch or feel or think about can quickly be politicised, can fans responsibly consolidate the man’s opinion with his work? With new Kanye West music reportedly in the works, can fans separate the art from the artist? Should they?

Although holding out hope that West’s politics won’t affect his work is still tempting for some, many fans have seen this coming. This isn’t the first time West has shown his pro-Trump side. In November 2016, during the second leg of his Saint Pablo Tour, he announced he would have voted for Trump, and a controversial photo of West with then-president-elect Trump made the rounds just a month later.