Singer John Mayer ignited a media storm on Wednesday with a no-holds barred Playboy interview in which he described former girlfriend Jessica Simpson as “sexual napalm” and confessed an aversion to sleeping with black women.
John also spoke about his passion for pornography and abiding love for ex-girlfriend Jennifer Aniston, describing her as “the most communicative, sweetest, kindest person”.
But it was the Grammy-winning singer/songwriter’s comments about black women, widely perceived as racist, that set the Internet alight and fast became one of the top three most popular topics on Twitter.
By late Wednesday, John was forced to apologize in a message of his own to his 3 million Twitter followers, saying he did not have the stomach for being “a shock jock.”
A white supremacist penis?
Despite being dubbed a womanizer in the media for relationships with Hollywood stars like Lindsay Lohan, Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Love Hewitt, John told Playboy that he was not open to having sex with black women, describing his penis as “sort of like a white supremacist”.
The singer also used a slur against African Americans that is widely perceived as racist.
“I am sorry that I used the (‘N’) word. And it’s such a shame that I did because the point I was trying to make was in the exact opposite spirit of the word itself,” Mayer said in a Twitter posting.
“It was arrogant of me to think I could intellectualize using it because I realize that there’s no intellectualizing a word that is so emotionally charged,” he added, saying he would never say the word again.
John said he thought it was time “to stop trying to be so raw in interviews.”
Yet he described his brief 2006 relationship with Jessica Simpson as an addiction. “That girl was like crack cocaine to me... Sexually, it was crazy. That’s all I’ll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm,” he said. He also said his “biggest dream is to write pornography”.
The interview can be read now Playboy’s website.