Justin Bieber and rapper Post Malone have responded humorously to the ‘choking’ incident that had Beliebers up in arms earlier this week on social media, assuring fans that everything’s cool between them and that they were merely playfighting.

The photos surfaced earlier this week, a couple of days after the 22 year old Canadian pop star was pictured flicking cigarette ash on his support act’s arm in a Houston club in the early hours of Sunday morning (April 10th).

The second picture emerged a few days later but was taken the same night by an onlooker. It showed Post Malone reaching with an arm and grabbing Bieber by the throat – and the singer looked pretty startled by it.

However, Bieber posted a new picture to his Instagram on Wednesday (April 13th) mocking the social uproar. It shows Bieber, in a Backstreet Boys T-shirt and his new blond dreadlocks, with his arm around a surrendering Post Malone. He captioned it “Backstreets back”.

Backstreets back

A photo posted by Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) on

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Meanwhile, former Kanye West collaborator Malone, a rapper from New York, took to his own Twitter account to clarify what was really going on.

“I love Justin y'all tripping lol… …He's my big brother and we like to rough house. If we was fighting someone would have done something instead of just sit around while the biebs gets chokeslammed… …End of story I love jus more than life and the mixtape is on the precipice of release. God bless my fans (sic).”

Bieber is currently in the middle of the North American leg of his current Purpose world tour. He recently declared he wouldn’t be fulfilling the fan ‘meet and greet’ sessions he’s famous for, saying that they leave him “drained”.

“Want to make people smile and happy but not at my expense and I always leave feeling mentally and emotionally exhausted to the point of depression,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “Never want to disappoint but I feel I would rather give you guys the show and my albums as promised.”

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