Cee Lo Green, who on Friday took to Twitter and called a reviewer “gay” for writing a negative review of his June 16 performance in Minneapolis, said he said shouldn’t “have to apologize for speaking my mind or defending my performance.”
In an interview with Us Weekly, Green, a vocal coach on the NBC reality talent show “The Voice,” said he “spoke too soon,” and wants his fans to know that he isn’t a homophobe.
“She was very critical of me. At the time I didn’t even know what gender the person was. I was being a little outspoken that night, a little outrageous,” he tells Us. “I always expect people to assume that everything I do is part of my character and sense of humor. I assumed that whoever it was would assume it was all in good fun. It wasn’t taken so well, apparently.”
“I most certainly am not harboring any sort of negative feeling toward the gay community. I don’t have an opinion on people with different religious, sexual or political preferences,” he explains.
“I’m one of the most liberal artists that I think you will ever meet, and I pride myself on that. Two of the remaining members that I have on my team on The Voice are proud and outspokenly gay. We just did a team performance of ‘Everyday People,’ and I picked that song for us to do specifically to highlight how we can get along even though we’re so different.”
Green likely under the assumption that the reviewer — Andrea Swensson of City Pages — was a man, tweeted, “I’m guessing ur gay? and my masculinity offended u?”
When some twitter followers responded with anger, Green wondered, “what was homophobic about that?”
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In her review, Swensson said that Green “failed to measure up to the fun factor of his recorded material. Green spent most of the set stationed in front of a mic at the center of the stage, barely moving an inch while he sang and flanked by two forgettable back-up singers and a DJ that was all but hidden behind a giant LCD display.”
Swensson called the tweet “just plain weird.”
“If I could take it all back, I would. I was not being serious,” Green told Us. “I just wanted to defend our performance.”
Green has since deleted both tweets from his Twitter page.
