Putting aside Kanye West‘s tendency to embroil himself in touchy matters, Christina Aguilera praises the rapper for his artistry.
Two weeks before West returned to the spotlight with a bang — raising eyebrows with his praise of President Donald Trump on Twitter and getting backlash for implying during an interview on TMZ that slavery was a “choice” — the 37-year-old diva chatted with Billboard about working with him on her upcoming album Liberation, her first in six years.
“I’ve always been a huge fan of Kanye,” Aguilera said. “Outside of, you know, his controversial aspects, I just think he’s a great artist and musicmaker and beatmaker. The artists that he chooses to pluck from different walks of life are so interesting.”
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West and Aguilera worked on two titles together for Liberation; a track called “Accelerate,” which features Ty Dolla $ign and 2 Chainz, and “Maria,” which Aguilera names her favorite song on the new album.
Although the former Voice coach shared that the two would talk “forever” while collaborating, they lost contact. “There were some personal things that arose,” she said, referring to his hospitalization for exhaustion after canceling his Saint Pablo tour in November 2016.
The mom of two also has plenty of love for West’s in-laws: the Kardashians and Jenners. After Kylie Jenner dressed up as the singer during her early-2000s “Dirrty” days for Halloween in 2016, Aguilera invited her to resurrect the costume for her birthday party a few months later.
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“I said, ‘You have to come dressed in that getup,'” she explained, noting that the party’s “dress as your inner child” theme took on a new meaning for the reality star, who was just 5 years old when the music video for “Dirrty” dropped. “So I guess Kylie’s inner child was very dirty. But I love it! Because she speaks my language.”
And the Kardashian connections don’t stop there. She learned at the family’s annual Christmas bash that Kendall Jenner would soon be moving into Aguilera’s neighborhood.
“The mom introduced us and was like, ‘You’re neighbors!’” she recalled. “So I was like, ‘Yes, I have allies.’”
