Justin Bieber has landed in hot water after making a controversial joke about FaceTiming Stevie Wonder.
On Thursday (April 10), the 31-year-old singer took to his Instagram Story to share a screenshot of himself appearing to video call Stevie Wonder, a 25-time Grammy winner who has been blind since birth.
"This fool never sees my facetimessss," Bieber wrote over the image, which showed him smiling at the camera as if waiting for Wonder to answer. He paired the post with the 74-year-old's song 'Overjoyed' playing in the background.
Reactions were swift and divided. “Isn't this offensive…” one user questioned, while another wrote: “didn’t like the 'joke', sorry Stevie is a Legend.”
A third added: “What? That can’t be real, can it? Ahhhhhh no that’s not it Justin. Do better.”
But not everyone was upset. “I found this hilarious…. I see folks can’t take a joke anymore,” one commenter posted.
The post comes just days after Bieber made headlines for snapping at paparazzi in Palm Springs, where he’s been spotted ahead of Coachella weekend one.
A clip captured by TMZ shows the Peaches singer shouting at a group of photographers who greeted him outside a café.
“No! Not good morning! You already know. Why are you here?” he barked, covering his face and accusing them of being motivated purely by greed.
“Money, money, money, money, money,” he repeated, making a “pay me” gesture with his fingers. “You don’t care about human beings.”
Bieber has recently opened up about his emotional state, including his struggles with anger.
“I got anger issues too, but I wanna grow and not react so much smh,” he wrote last month alongside a series of moody Instagram photos.
In another post, he admitted to feeling undeserving of the praise he receives. “People told me my whole life, ‘Wow, Justin, you deserve that,’” he shared. “And I personally have always felt unworthy, like I was a fraud... If they only knew my thoughts. How judgmental I am, how selfish I really am... They wouldn't be saying this.”
As speculation continues to swirl around Bieber's mental health and behavior, his team has pushed back against rumors of drug use.
After a video surfaced last month that appeared to show him smoking from a bong, his rep told TMZ: “The recurring narrative that Justin is using hard drugs is absolutely not true. Justin is currently in one of the best places in his life… It’s exhausting and pitiful and shows that despite the obvious truth, people are committed to keeping negative, salacious, harmful narratives alive.”
The rep added that Bieber is “actively parenting his newborn son” with wife Hailey and focusing on new music.
While the Stevie Wonder joke rubbed many the wrong way, the two artists do share history.
Bieber and the 'Superstition' artist performed together twice in 2011 - once at a Los Angeles charity benefit and again on The X Factor, where they sang holiday classics including 'Someday at Christmas'.
Wonder himself recently reflected on his childhood blindness during a conversation with journalist Wesley Morris and Barack Obama on The Wonder of Stevie podcast.
“I was born. Shortly after that, I’m blind,” Wonder said, cited by PEOPLE. “My mother went through the different things, and so my experience with that was deep.”
He remembered his mother crying nightly until he told her: “'Mama, you shouldn’t cry, you’re making my head hurt.'
“And I said, ‘Maybe God has something for me that’s bigger than all this,’” Wonder recalled. “History proved that true.”
Meanwhile, the 'Baby' superstar - whose last album Justice dropped in 2021 - has been dropping hints about his return to music. According to his team, he’s currently “actively parenting his newborn son” with wife Hailey and putting his energy into his next musical chapter.