Rapper Lil Twist said this week he was asked by Justin Bieber’s management to cover for the pop star’s drug use.
"His team had their knee, metaphorically, on my neck for years just so they could keep one side clean," he said during an interview on the Mina's House podcast. "I took that heat."
The 27-year-old, whose real name is Christopher Moore, was a close friend of Bieber during the Canadian singer’s period of acting out in the early 2010s.
“If they would have put weed charges on Justin in his early career it would have been bad on him,” Twist explained. “So I got a call one day saying, ‘Twist, do you really love this kid?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ They said, ‘Cool, if you love him then you can take the heat for him because you can come off a little weed charge. You’re associated with Lil Wayne. You’re a rapper.’
“And then it got to a point where I didn’t even have to be there at times and they were still putting it, ‘Twist did it, Twist did it, Twist did it.’ It became overwhelming and then it got out of hand."
Twist later clarified his comments on Twitter. “Let me b clear it wasn’t actual charges, no.” (The rapper was, however, arrested in 2013 while behind the wheel of one of Bieber’s sports cars.)
Twist made the comments after being asked about Bieber’s admission last weekend that he “benefitted off of black culture.” The rapper said he brought Bieber together with writer-producer Poo Bear (aka Jason Boyd), who has crafted Bieber’s R&B sound.
“If I was smart, I would have put my five percent finder’s fee in that contract but I just wanted my friend to sound better," Twist recalled. "I wanted him to sound Black."
The pair no longer hang out but Twist said Bieber still reaches out to him. “I still love Justin to this day,” he said, later urging Bieber to come clean. “Yeah, we smoked weed. We both did. Yeah, we did such and such. We both did. Why was it just… you know… but whatever."
Neither Bieber nor his manager Scot “Scooter” Braun has publicly responded to Twist’s comments.
In a statement he shared Thursday on Twitter, Twist said: “While promoting my TV show, the subject of certain events with Bieber were brought up, and in the spirit of being authentic, I felt it a disservice to my fans and the general public to not be completely transparent about my experience.”