John Legend On Kanye West's Downfall

Buzz Feed

12-05-2025

If you watch a Kanye West live performance from the early 2000s, it's possible that you might spot a young John Legend somewhere in the background.
Yep, long before he was the EGOT winner he is today, John got his big break thanks to his close ties to Kanye, serving as his backing singer and keyboard player.
For many years, John and Kanye were incredibly close, both professionally and personally, as were their wives, Kim Kardashian and Chrissy Teigen. However, around the time Kanye first publicly endorsed Donald Trump in 2016, it seems a rift began to form between the two artists.
In 2018, Kanye memorably shared a screenshot of a text exchange between himself and John where the All Of Me singer was encouraging him to 'reconsider aligning' himself with Trump. 'You're way too powerful and influential to endorse who he is and what he stands for…So many people who love you feel so betrayed right now because they know the harm that Trump's policies cause, especially to people of color,' one of John's messages read. 'Don't let this be part of your legacy.'
At the time, Kanye said he shared the private texts online 'to show that there are people around [him] that disagree with [him] and voice their opinion.'
As we know, Kanye's problematic behavior only got worse over the years, resulting in his divorce from Kim in early 2021. Since then, the rapper's vitriolic hate speech online has rightfully left his reputation in ruins.
Now, commenting on his former collaborator's public downfall during a new interview with the UK Times, John considered the drastic changes in Kanye's personality since they first met as budding artists. '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. He had so much optimism, so much creativity,' he said. '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.'
The Oscar-winning artist also acknowledged how his proximity to Kanye in the early 2000s took his career to the next level after being 'turned down by labels everywhere.' 'Kanye blew up after producing Jay-Z's album The Blueprint in 2001,' he said. 'Then he experienced a buzz as a solo artist and the whole time I was traveling with him, doing shows with him, getting exposure not only as his singer and keyboard player, but also as an artist myself. Then The College Dropout sold 400,000 copies in its first week, everyone wanted to know what was happening in our camp.'
He added: 'All those people who turned me down suddenly decided that my music sounded a lot better than it did the first time round.'
It's no secret that Kanye was deeply impacted by the death of his mother, Donda West, in November 2007. Notably, John weighed in on the widely theorized belief that 'there was definitely a difference' in Kanye from that point onwards in terms of his problematic behavior. 'His descent started then and seems to have accelerated recently,' he said.