Christina Aguilera's next era is, truly, unapologetic.

The "Accelerate" singer, who's gearing up to release her first album in six years, shocked fans a bit when she revealed that Kanye West produced tracks on her forthcoming album (West has recently made waves for some outlandish and politically controversial tweets and rants). But in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Aguilera says she's learned to separate the man's convictions from his talent, and said the former hasn't precluded the latter.

"When I first started the Kanye songs, it was before he even [released] Life of Pablo. Then, he went on tour," she said. "Look, he’s always said things that have stirred controversy and attention. I’m not getting involved in what he’s saying or anything like that. I know him as an artist. I do know that when we sat down and he played me these tracks, he got me. I think he’s an artist first and foremost and we’re not always going to agree with artists. I loved our initial meeting and we totally clicked. I found him to be very endearing."

Aguilera also explained that her years away from the pop music front lines were a result of getting a little too comfortable — perhaps a condition of appearing on the demanding The Voice for a number of seasons (Aguilera recently admitted she all but hated working on the NBC hit).

"But joining The Voice and being on television was a comfortable place — almost too comfortable after a certain amount of time. Just sitting in a chair all day is not personally, artistically rewarding. Doing TV is super time-consuming, especially on competitive shows. You’re juggling a team and you wanna be there for them and I take that very seriously. Having to do all the obligations that come with working for a network, you just feel like you’re being sucked dry and you’re not being able to truly do anything for you," she said. "All the things, behind the scenes, it just stopped being anything I truly believed in and it got away from what I originally had signed up for."

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