John Roger Stephens (born December 28, 1978), known professionally as John Legend, is an American singer, songwriter, musician and actor.
It's an artist's duty to reflect the times in which we live.
It's important for us to fight for certain changes that need to happen. And one of those issues that I really care about is education. But also another one is incarceration.
In the 1970s, for all the Stevie Wonders, I'm sure there were five artists that were making forgettable music.
For me, no matter how much money you want to make off of singing, no matter what kind of fame you want to make, achieve, the most important thing to me is making music that you're proud of, making music that comes from you, comes from an authentic place in you.
I'm trying to be me and embrace all the parts of me that have grown up, listened to more music and soaked up more influences.
I know when things feel a little, like, intrusive and when they don't. I don't have a lot to hide. But I do sometimes think, don't share everything.
I always saw myself as a singer-songwriter, a solo-artist, that's why working with other artists was never satisfying for me.
I do believe that part of us ending racism is us seeing each other's humanity and learning to love each other, even if we look different or worship differently or live differently.
My first big break came with Lauryn Hill on a track called Everything is Everything, I played piano on that track way back in 1998.
It's not enough to say we need to love each other, you have to go behind that and say we need to change these policies, we need to fight, we need to protest, we need to agitate for change.
Every artist wants some sort of feedback, because you make this music and you hope people love it and you want to hear if they love it and what they love about it, what their favorite song is, what they think the next single should be. I like to hear those things.
My family is very musical, I was surrounded by it. And from four years old I was the one that asked my mother could I take piano lessons. It wasn't forced on me. It was something I wanted to do. And ever since, I've never stopped, I've never stopped playing music. I never went through a period where I didn't want to do it.
Well, Jeff Buckley for me is one of the greatest singers I've ever heard. And the reason why is he has an amazing range, amazing emotional power in his voice. And the music he put around it also just had this passion and this soul to it and this spirit to it that very few artists have, and he passed at a very young age.
The future started yesterday, and we're already late.
You believe in equality for women and men. And that means that, not only do you believe in it kind of in the abstract but you actively think people should seek it when it comes to the way you hire people, the way you compensate people, the way you treat women and men in professional settings and school, whatever the case, giving them equal opportunities without disadvantaging them because of their, for the fact that they're women. And to me that's what it means for me to be a feminist. I don't think it's that controversial.
John Legend is a nickname that some friends started calling me, and it kind of grew into my stage name.
At the end of the day, there's only a few major stars in the music business, and then there's all these people that are aspiring to be that.
I want to move people.
The struggle for freedom and justice is now.
I think it's a bit of a myth that black Americans need one leader. We're not a monolith. And now that legal segregation and discrimination has been pretty much abolished there isn't the sort of universal mandate that a black leader would have. Black folks live in a wide variety of social situations right now.