Stevie Wonder Slams Kanye West for Calling Slavery a 'Choice': 'That's Just Foolishness'
Stevie Wonder is writing off Kanye West‘s controversial comments after the rapper called slavery a “choice.”
The 67-year-old music legend spoke out about the rapper on Thursday in an interview after a show at a West Hollywood venue, according to a report from the Associated Press.
“There’s been a lot of talk about what was said by Kanye,” Wonder said. “I want people to understand that the truth is the truth and a lie is a lie.”
“We all know that slavery was not a choice,” he said, comparing West’s slavery comments to those who say the Holocaust was not real. “I just think that people need to understand that if you know your history, if you know the truth, you know that’s just foolishness.”
Want to keep up on the latest from PEOPLE? Sign up for our daily newsletter to get our best stories of the day delivered straight to your inbox.
West, 40, made his initial comments on May 1 during an interview on TMZ Live, while outlining his decision to wear the infamous #MAGA baseball cap that has become a hallmark of Trump’s political movement.
“People were taught how to think, we’re taught how to feel. We don’t know how to think for ourselves, we don’t know how to feel for ourselves,” he said. “People say ‘Feel free,’ but they don’t really want us to feel free. I felt a freedom, first of all, doing something that everybody tells you not to do.”
“You hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years?! That sounds like a choice,” he added. “You were there for 400 years and it was all of y’all? It’s like we’re meant to be in prison. I like the word ‘prison’ because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks…Prison is something that unites us as one race.”
The rapper further clarified his comments on Twitter, writing, “to make myself clear. Of course I know that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will. My point is for us to have stayed in that position even though the numbers were on our side means that we were mentally enslaved. … We can’t be mentally imprisoned for another 400 years. We need free thought now.”
West has since gone to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to finish his multiple new albums. (due May 25).
RELATED VIDEO: Kim Kardashian Says She Didn’t Realize Kanye West Was Suffering from Anxiety After Paris Attack
Wife Kim Kardashian West joked in an episode of Live with Kelly and Ryan that aired Friday that her husband’s outbursts resulted in her first grey hair. “I am blaming that on him,” the KKW Beauty mogul said, adding later that “he’s doing really good!”
The mom of three admitted later she wasn’t fully aware of the anxiety plaguing the rapper after she was held at gunpoint during the 2016 Paris robbery in Paris.
“He always is so strong,” she said. “Obviously he made a lot of changes with our security detail … but as far as emotionally, he always was really strong, and my rock.”
“Now I can read the reports of what the people in jail said … they said they had been following me for two years, and that’s crazy,” she continued. “There was a couple dozen people involved, so they definitely were such a machine that they figured out when he wasn’t going to be there.”