Late last week singer Cee Lo Green sent a tweet to Andrea Swensson, a female writer from City Pages in Minneapolis who published a negative review of his recent show in that city and whom apparently Green initially assumed was male.
The tweet to Swensson: "I respect your criticism but be fair! People enjoyed last night!I'm guessing ur gay?and my masculinity offended u?well f—k U!"
Swensson herself calls the tweet "just plain weird."
Green has since deleted the message from his Twitter account and has apologized via a subsequent tweet which has also been deleted:
“Apologies gay community! What was homophobic about that? I said I was guessing he [was] gay which is fine but its nice to [know] what u think of me. Nakia and Vicki ‘Team Cee Lo' are proudly gay and are [my] greatest assets! I'm no bigot or homophobic. [It's] all a very big misunderstanding.”
Green has given Us Magazine a lengthy explanation about the entire incident:
"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."
Though he regrets his choice of words, Green tells Us he shouldn't "have to apologize for speaking my mind or defending my performance."
"If I could take it all back, I would. I was not being serious," he says. "I just wanted to defend our performance. It was only our third show with a whole new crew and we were all really proud about the progress that we had made."
