Aside from Ja Rule, the two people many folks wanted to hear from the most about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock were Rock himself and August Alsina. Rock, obviously, was the victim of the slap — he’s fine, by the way, everybody should maybe calm down a hair — while Alsina is the singer who was reportedly “entangled” with Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith, a thing for which all three were roundly abused in the media for about a year (you’ll remember that Smith attacked Rock after the comedian joked about Jada’s hair). Both men finally addressed the incident yesterday; Chris onstage at his Boston show, and August via — where else? — his Instagram account.
Posting a selfie to his feed (not his Story as so many celebrities tend to do), Alsina didn’t directly mention the slap, but he did advise readers to ‘choose peace,’ something he appears to be doing himself. “Trusting that life’s intricate puzzle pieces are all forming together for the greater good and mastering of the seasonally sometime chaotic nature of your life’s art piece that’s being formed and painted by birthing life to your internal masterpiece,” he wrote. “grown through external chaos-metamorphosing alchemy, dark turned 2 light and beauty within. I’m A Walking Billboard & Network Simply Desiring To Televise & Broadcast Love, the love, grace and healing embrace of God, Good Music that’s healing (w/ a lil bit of nasty).”
Alsina’s involvement in the Smiths allegedly open relationship made waves online throughout 2020 when it was revealed that he was supposedly dating the older Jada. Social media had several field days with that information and the episode of Jada’s Red Table Talk in which she addressed the relationship smashed the show’s one-day viewing totals by rather a lot. And now that we’ve all driven up the streams of J. Cole’s “Jada and Will love” name-checking single “No Role Modelz” and heard from everyone except Daniel Radcliffe about the incident, perhaps it’s finally time to move on.