For me I'm actually doing what I normally do when I do my solo thing and the other thing is actually more new to me.
Black people invented jazz. But this story [in La La Land] wasn't ever claiming to be that. It's just a story about two people from one writer's point of view.
But in my mind I've always been a solo artist- I've just been working with a lot of great people like Kanye and Alicia Keys and Jay-Z.
I would tell myself, "Love yourself and don't be afraid to take risks." I was often afraid to take risks, socially, because I was young and a little more shy and still figuring out who I wanted to be. Sometimes I look back and think, "I should have just been bolder and more confident."
I guess a lot of times pressure is put on something after it becomes big.
My mother, I want her to like my music, but she's not exactly my target audience. So I care more about the fans in general, just making sure they enjoy what I do.
You have to be careful when it comes to copyrights, whether just sounding like or feeling like something is enough to say you violated their copyrights because there's a lot of music out there, and there's a lot of things that feel like other things that are influenced by other things. And you don't want to get into that thing where all of us are suing each other all the time because this and that song feels like another song.
When I write, I don't really focus on duets or anything like that, or whether I'm going to feature this or that rapper. I just focus on just making a great song and figure out the rest later.
I was always the front man for what I was doing from when I was 6.
I think it's hard to really write a song that will educate someone because songs are meant to be ... you don't want to be too didactic in a song because it doesn't make for good music. And I think the role of songs can be to inspire people but there needs to education and prose to back that up.
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.
The issue I focus on the most is extreme poverty. I think it's kind of out of sight out of mind. I wish there would be more stories about that to connect people to what's happening. To personalize it, to make it real to people, to inspire them to action.
Music was my life...It was everything to me, even though I was in school majoring in English. I was still very focused on music and always finding ways to perform, so that was what set me up to want to become a recording artist.
That's the evergreen nature of a great song. They can be resurrected. They can be covered. They can find new relevance due to changing circumstances in history.
The weirdest thing about Hillary Clinton's email 'scandal' is finding out some of our senators still don't use email.
I'm used to getting sexy sometimes in the lyrics.
I've always followed politics, and I think politics is everybody's business because we're electing someone who's going to be making important decisions that will affect all of our lives.
I don't like going to football games. I like watching them on television. When you go to a game, it's hard to focus. There's so much going on, and it's cold. I'd rather sit and watch it and get replays and commentary.
Well, I like songs that have like a little bit of quirkiness to them.
I'm honestly not a great gift giver. I could give better - my girlfriends have always complained about that.
John Legend is a nickname that some friends started calling me, and it kind of grew into my stage name.
Marvin Gaye was one of the coolest. I look to him as a style icon and as an artist.
I was a busy kid in high school - a little bit of an overachiever, I guess. Prom king was kind of silly, but the rest of the stuff was important to me.
Anybody under the age of forty knows hip-hop, gospel and R&B pretty well, and it's all a part of what we consider to be 'black music.' There is a natural synergy between the three.
I always saw myself as a singer-songwriter, a solo-artist, that's why working with other artists was never satisfying for me.
