In an interview with People , August Alsina said he felt he needed to come clean about his relationship with Jada Pinkett Smith when rumors surrounding the pair began to affect his career.
After keeping the details of his connection with the A-lister secret for years, August told the publication he shared his truth in June because “there were certain falsities about me, and it affected my business relationships.”
“I never really cared about what people thought of me, but my personal life started to seep into my business life,” he explained to the news source. “I could understand why it would look like I’m reckless or disrespectful so it really started to affect my livelihood, and I’m never okay with that.”
The singer-songwriter pointed to his role as legal guardian to his three nieces — Chaylin, 14, Amaiya, 13, and Kayden, 11 — as a reason why it was so important to him to protect his reputation. As the publication noted, the children’s father Melvin, Alsina’s older brother, was shot dead in New Orleans in 2010, while their mother Chandra died of cancer in 2018.
According to the news site, Alsina said he has a deep respect for the Smith family and never intended to “cause trouble” for them, but underlined that he has no regrets about publicly outing the affair.
“I’m always going to be in the driver’s seat of my life and control my narrative,” he said. “I can’t let anybody else do that for me.”
Alsina’s revelation about the relationship to radio host Angela Yee earlier this year led to an episode of Jada’s chat show Red Table Talk in which she sat down with husband Will Smith to discuss the situation, the publication noted. During the chat, the couple revealed that they had gone through a temporary split, which occurred out of the public eye, at the time of Jada and August’s relationship.
As The Inquisitr previously covered, in July, Alsina dropped a new song titled “Entanglements” — a word Jada had used to describe the pair’s relationship during the Red Table Talk episode. As a result, there was significant backlash upon the track’s release, with some fans alleging that Alsina was attempting to capitalize on the situation.
“When I flipped it, it became a problem for people,” August told People . “Like, ‘Oh, you’re clout-chasing.’ I’m just doing business. It’s not personal.”
In the interview, Alsina added that, despite all the drama, he does not view his connection with the Smiths as broken and claimed that there is a lot of love between the parties involved.