Will.I.Am Defends Justin Bieber, Simultaneously Boosts Amsterdam Tourism

Will.i.am has come out in defense of Justin Bieber over a guestbook comment the Canadian teen left at Amsterdam’s Anne Frank House after an April 12 visit.

“Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber,” wrote the 19-year-old singer.

After Bieber’s comment was published at the museum’s Facebook page the next day, it unleashed scorching international criticism on Facebook, Twitter and in the wider media.

Now, will.i.am has stepped into the fray.

“He went to a museum!,” the Black Eyes Peas frontman points out.

“If you go to Amsterdam you are going to see some crazy freaking s**t. There is a lot of s**t to do in Amsterdam but he chose to go to Anne Frank’s house. The guy is alright!”

The producer-rapper who featured Bieber on his recently unveiled music video for his new single “#thatPOWER,” also compared his experience as a young man with that of his young friend.

“I remember when I was 19, it was pretty tough,” recalled the hitmaker.

“The difference between me and him is that I got to grow up in private, he is growing up in front of everybody!,” he added.

The Voice UK judge also shared his opinion on Bieber as an artist.

“Justin is a great talent,” he told the UK’s The Sun newspaper. “Of all the people I have worked with over the past five years, he is one of the best.

Will.i.am’s defense of the teen phenom over the Anne Frank furor echoes the feeling of some that far from being “disrespectful, “arrogant,” “self-serving” and “conceited,” Bieber’s guestbook entry was — in fact — heartfelt and accurate.

Over the past week, Anne Frank House staff, comic Joan Rivers, and Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League and others, have also defended Bieber.

Foxman pointed out that Frank — a Jewish girl, then 13, who went into hiding with her family in Amsterdam from 1942 to 1944 during the Nazi occupation, and who later died of Typhus in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945 — was interested in the pop culture and celebrities of her day, as can be read in the now celebrated diaries Frank wrote while in hiding.

In addition, Eva Schloss, stepsister to Frank and a Holocaust survivor, recently commented on the Bieber-Frank controversy.

“It’s so childish,”the 83-year-old told the UK’s Telegraph. “She probably would have been a fan. Why not? He’s a young man and she was a young girl, and she liked film stars and music.”

The continuing media deconstruction of Bieber follows over a month of molten headlines related to dramas on his Believe world tour, and one alleged off-tour incident.

With questions being asked as to whether the predominantly skewed negative, constant analysis of anything Bieber does amounts to bullying, and those who argue that he has raised awareness about Anne Frank and the Holocaust — it seems will.i.am is in good company.

[Image via Featureflash / Shutterstock.com]