August Alsina and Jada Pinkett Smith at the 2017 BET Awards. Photo / Getty Images
August Alsina and Jada Pinkett Smith at the 2017 BET Awards. Photo / Getty Images
Jada Pinkett Smith’s former fling, August Alsina appears to have come out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
The 30-year-old singer appeared in a reboot of VH1′s The Surreal Life earlier this week with another man who told Alsina “I love you”.
In an extended clip, the singer tells fans it’s been one year since they filmed the show and revealed the experience has taught him love in so many different ways and ultimately lead him to being open to finding love.
He goes on to say, “What do you know, love showed up but in a new way.”
“I wanna share that and really honour the person that I love and love me back and teaching me so much about love and healing. I wanna do that in front of the world because it defies all the constructs that one would say love is supposed to be or love is supposed to look like.”
While Alsina did not directly confirm his sexuality or reveal whether the love he was referring to was romantic, a man entered the frame and the two embraced in a hug before the second man said, “I love you”.
full clip of August Alsina coming out & showing his boyfriend to the world
Alsina’s confessional video comes two years after Pinkett Smith revealed she was involved in a years-long affair with the singer.
The affair is something she famously referred to as an “entanglement” and resulted in a very honest conversation with her husband Will Smith which took place at the infamous Red Table as part of Pinkett Smith’s YouTube series.
In 2020 Alsina spoke out about the affair, telling People Magazine he came forward because it had started to affect “business relationships” in his career as a singer.
“I really am a private person,” the R&B singer said in the interview. “People have never known much about my love life because it’s not important.”
August Alsina appeared to announce he is a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Photo / VH1
“I never really cared about what people thought of me, but my personal life started to seep into my business life. There were certain falsities about me, and it affected my business relationships.”
Alsina explained that the gossip spreading about his relationship with Pinkett Smith made him appear “reckless and disrespectful”, and that was “hurting his livelihood”.
“And I’m never okay with that. I got three kids to look after. Kill me, hate me, stone me, but bury me an honest man. All I can do is tell the truth.”
Alsina became the legal guardian of his three nieces Chaylin, 14, Amaiya, 13, and Kayden, 11 after his brother, the girls’ father, was shot and killed in New Orleans in 2010 and their mother died of cancer in 2018.
It comes after news the star is planning to release a tell-all book about his relationship with Pinkett Smith – which started when he was 23.
A source told The Sun in April, “August is getting ready to sign a big-money book deal which will detail his romantic liaisons with Jada.
“He has always maintained that Will gave him permission to sleep with Jada, something they have publicly denied.”
Despite claims there are several publishers bidding for the book, there has been no further information released.