John Legend After Va. Visit: Ready to Go Right Now

Singer's tweets describe encounter with "old racists"

What would a John Legend song about northern Virginia include? Ordinary people? Maybe. Prejudiced people? Probably.

The singer/songwriter apparently had a run-in with guys he described as "old racists" while riding through Fredericksburg, Va., on Sunday. He described the experience in posts to his Twitter account and even used a hashtag to scoff at the commonwealth's "Virginia is for Lovers" slogan.

Here's one of Legend's tweets from that evening, after he performed at the Earth Day concert on the National Mall:

"Visiting family in VA. Ran into two old guys who must've been celebrating confederate history month. Told us to get our [a**es] out of here"

Subsequent posts explain how, according to Legend, the men looked at him and his unnamed companion(s) like they were driving suspiciously. They were driving slowly because Legend's GPS system apparently couldn't provide directions to the new development they were trying to find. Legend went on to tweet that when he asked the men for directions, he got the aforementioned response, which was neither nice nor helpful.

Seeing as how Legend took aim at two things designed to promote tourism in the Old Dominion (the "Lovers" slogan and Gov. Bob McDonnell's ill-advised Confederate History Month declaration), Fredericksburg's tourism manager, Karen Hedelt, is understandably concerned. She told the Washington Post's Reliable Source:

"That certainly isn't our approach and not very beneficial to our brand. We don't want anyone to have a bad experience."

At least Legend gave the rest of his visit to the area the green light: His last tweet on Sunday said his concert experience was "hot" with "great energy and great music."

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