John Legend Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winner on new music with Pharrell, staying true to himself, estranged relationship with Kanye West, bond with wife Chrissy Tiegen, overcoming loss in public, fatherhood and the cost of staying true to yourself

“I think all of us have to be humble to a certain point, it doesn’t mean don’t believe in yourself and don’t believe in your ideas but also have some humility.” John Legend On this episode of The Pivot Podcast, John Legend opens up to Ryan, Channing and Fred about the journey that shaped him — from his rise in music and the power of staying true to himself to navigating fame, family, friendship, and loss in the public eye. One of a small group who is an EGOT, winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, John Legend has had decades of success but is still chasing something new in every piece of music he records. John gets personal about life with his wife, Chrissy Teigen, and their children, sharing how fatherhood has changed him and how he and his family have navigated the heartbreaking loss of a child. He commends his wife for being courageous enough to share publicly so others learn from her during the darkest hours and how people around the world are better for it. He reflects on his relationship with Kanye West, and how it was extremely sad yet discouraging the entire process was to watch someone he was once close with use his platform for hate and fear. Things in music, media and business may be forever changing but John stands firm in the importance of speaking up for what he believes in, and what it means to stand true in your values and be authentic. He also takes us inside his creative journey, reflecting on working with Pharrell Williams, the collaborations that have shaped his sound, and the inspiration behind his new music and upcoming album. From evolving as an artist to protecting culture and using his platform for something bigger than himself, John shares why authenticity matters now more than ever. In an industry that often rewards conformity, John explains why being yourself is the most powerful statement you can make. It's an honest conversation about love, legacy, resilience, and the courage to keep evolving without losing who you are — and why, no matter how much life changes, staying true to yourself will always be the ultimate pivot. Full episode of video is streaming now on Netflix. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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  John Legend believed he was the guy before anybody else did. That's how John Stevens actually became John Legend. And we know it's a nickname that was given to him by a colleague that stuck. Even though his people soon discovered there was already a porn star by the name of Johnny Legend. And that's another story. 22 years ago, Get Lifted introduced John Legend to the world. But excellence isn't something he only achieved once. It's something he continued to chase every single day, and still does. This isn't just another story about some guy who loved music, though John Legend certainly does. It's a story of family struggle, forgiveness, and chance encounters that change your life. John opens up about losing and reconnecting with his mother, the church where he sang with someone

• 1:45Speaker 02

  who introduced him to Lauryn Hill, and the college roommate who just so happened to be related to Kanye West. Speaking of Kanye, the rise of good music deserves to be studied just as much as the forces that eventually drove a wedge between the two once close friends. At 15, John Legend wrote an essay, and he made a vow to become a star and to use his platform to create change. The man that Kanye became eventually stood in direct opposition of that mission. But beyond the music, John is a husband and a father who openly loves his family. And they share their lives with the world, even when that's not easy. Like in the case of when he and his wife Chrissy lost their son, Jack.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  With his new album Muse alongside Pharrell on the horizon, John Legend joins the boys on the Pivot to reflect on his journey, his legacy, and why he still believes there's so much good music left to make. So Pivot fam, it's about that time to pivot.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  John Legend, welcome to The Pivot.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  It's great to be here, finally.

• 3:07Speaker 03

  Man.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  I've been a fan for a while. I love the show and excited to be here with you guys.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Man, I'm excited as well. This is Fred Taylor, this is Channing Crowder, I'm Ryan Clark, Pivot fam.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  Thank you for pivoting with us. Listen, we're gonna get into some deep questions as we near the release of Muse. But before that,

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Before that.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  I want to share this.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Let's be shallow.

• 3:28Speaker 03

  Let's be shallow. Okay, you ready?

• 3:31Speaker 03

  I know the only person, well, I met the only person today that doesn't like ordinary people.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  Channing Crowder.

• 3:40Speaker 04

  Unrealistic.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  It's probably, it's probably got a story to it. A relationship story.

• 3:45Speaker 04

  It's just a word. I make mistakes, but you do too. But let's just take it easy. No, no, you ain't telling the woman she does too. You can't say, hey, I make mistakes.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  I know I misbehaved, and you've made your mistakes.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  Second part, unrealistic.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  And we both still got room left to grow.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  We'll never get to the grow part.

• 4:05Speaker 04

  We'll never get to the grow part if you say that to a woman.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  And though love sometimes hurts.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  I still put you first.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  Yes, it's beautiful.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  And we'll make this thing work.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, but what if I'm getting hit with an iron cold?

• 4:18Speaker 02

  After you said you make mistakes. Fair enough.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  No.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  And then my other biggest hit, I said, "All Your Perfect Imperfections", which prompts the question, well, what are they?

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's what the woman would ask. What do you, what do you think these imperfections are?

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Exactly, and then you'd be like, actually, I was kidding, I was just kidding.

• 4:37Speaker 04

  Okay, so I thought you were purposely lying.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  What we're basically saying is if you put on the John Legend Greatest Hits to woo your woman, you might start a fight.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  It just depends on the song. You know, my first album, Get Lifted, it had a few cheating songs. So, number one, the first line is, "You can't say I don't love you just because I cheat on you, because you don't see all I do to keep you from knowing the things I do", which, that will start a fight, for sure. Like, ordinary people would not start a fight anywhere near as bad as number one would. And then "She Don't Have To Know", which is also on Get Lifted, is like the most romantic cheating song you can make. It's like on the level of like me and Mrs. Jones, and, you know, there's just those classic cheating songs. It just makes cheating sound so lovely and beautiful

• 5:31Speaker 02

  and dramatic. But I wouldn't advise you to do it. It's just nothing but trouble.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, number one, you're just basically telling her, see, if I ain't really love you, I wouldn't lie to you.

• 5:43Speaker 04

  I wouldn't try so hard to hide it.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  I'd just do it in front of you. But at least I don't do it. Yeah, so we're not gonna do that.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  It's terrible. It's not good advice.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's not good.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  It's like that guy going around the internet like, here's five things you should say to your wife when you're in an argument. And he's like, are you on your period? Like, don't say that.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Nah.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Don't say that.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Absolutely, but nah, man. I think, I think that's all about creativity. And you've shown creativity now, at least for us, for over two decades. And I think it's been a beautiful journey to take with you. But, you know, when you're traveling to Scranton to play the organ at church, and someone walks up to you and says, hey, you know, you should, you should meet Lauryn.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  How do you ever envision that, you know, the start of that conversation leads you here?

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Well, I, I was open. You know, I was like, say yes to these opportunities when they come your way, and know that you've been preparing for this all your life. So I started playing when I was three or four years old. I started singing in church when I was like seven years old. And any opportunity that I got to showcase my talent, I took advantage of it. And I think I felt confident to do that because I prepared. You know, they say luck is when opportunity meets preparation. That means you need the opportunities, but you also have to be ready when they come. And I had been performing my whole life. I had been practicing for those moments my whole life.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  So when she's like, Johnny, why don't you go sit and play for Lauryn so she can hear what you can do? Like, I'm ready. I'm ready for that moment. And I think that's what I advise every artist to do, is prepare yourself while you're alone. Prepare yourself in the dark so that when the lights are on, you're ready.

• 7:34Speaker 04

  Were you prepared mentally? Because like, your religious background, your upbringing, and you're talented with this and with the voice. Now you jump into an industry that might not be as God-fearing as you were.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  I think, you know, I've told this story before. Like, growing up, I grew up in the church, Pentecostal church, holiness church. My grandfather was a pastor. My grandmother was a church organist. My mother was a choir director. And I was homeschooled as well. So I lived a very sheltered life. And they didn't want no outside influences in our lives. So they're like, no secular music in the house. When we in the car, we ain't listening to R and B radio. We ain't listening to hip-hop radio. We're listening to gospel music. And that was my first 10 years of life. Homeschool, only church, only church music.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  But then my parents got divorced, and I started going to public school, and things started to open up more. So by the time I had met Lauryn Hill, I wasn't so worried about, oh, am I allowed to do secular music? It was more just being ready for that moment, having prepared in all these different avenues. At church, at school, at talent shows, wherever I had the opportunity, I was performing. So I was just, it was like being at the gym. Like, preparing your, your voice, preparing your mind to be ready for those moments when they came. And I was ready.

• 9:13Speaker 05

  Even with that, you talk about being ready. You name yourself John Legend before you had any legendary accomplishments.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Yes, that is, that is true. And it started as a nickname that a guy named J. Ivy was the first guy to call me John Legend. He's a poet from Chicago. And we were working on Kanye's debut album, College Dropout. I didn't even have a record deal yet. So calling myself John Legend when I didn't have a record deal was presumptuous, you might say. But I was also like, you know what?

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Why not? Why not declare myself to the world with this name? That takes up space, you know? That has presence to it and captures people's attention. And then I believed in myself enough, I believed in myself as an artist enough, to believe that I had the ability to live up to the name. I didn't know that it was gonna happen. I couldn't predict that it was gonna happen, but I knew that I had the potential to do it. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna call myself this, betting on myself, believing that- That was my question. Believing that I had the ability to live up to the name. And another thing I told myself is I'm not gonna not take the name,

• 10:30Speaker 02

  because I'm afraid of it. Because I'm afraid that somebody gonna say, "He ain't no legend." Like, I'm like, I'm gonna go out there and prove it. And I believe in myself enough to know that I can prove it. And so that was my mentality going into it. And the wildest part about it, after all that, I decided I'm going with the name. We're about, I'm about to get signed to Columbia, and then we're about to put my debut album, Get Lifted Out. And then my lawyer tells me, we have to clear this legally. Make sure you can legally use this name. So they go out and search for anybody else that might have a competing name. And there's this dude named Johnny Legend out there. And he's a porn producer.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  He also produced other things, and he made records. Like, so with trademark laws, if you're in the same business, you can't confuse the marketplace by having the same name. So the fact that he made records was very relevant to this conversation. So my lawyer's like, we have to go find this guy and clear it with him so you can use John Legend. He can be Johnny Legend, you can be John Legend. So we found the dude, convinced him to sign a deal for less money than we were willing to offer. We started low, but he didn't know anything about me. He didn't know if I was gonna blow up. He didn't know if I had the money to pay him way more than we offered. We started low, and he was like, okay, that's fine. And he took the offer.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  We paid him the money, we signed the deal, and I got the rights to John Legend. He wouldn't sue me, I wouldn't sue him, and we were good. Put out the album in December of that year, and the rest is history.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  Was he producing anything in particular when you rolled up on him?

• 12:11Speaker 02

  I didn't, I didn't see him in person. I never met him. I never met him. My manager talked to him and worked out the deal, and he signed it. So I have no idea what he was producing at the time. But he has some porn in his disc, in his filmography.

• 12:30Speaker 04

  Say, bro, do y'all remember when Clay Matthews got his looks maxed? I'm talking about like ridiculous jawline, balloon biceps, them huge calf implants? Which, by the way, I wouldn't be mad if I could get some of those.

• 12:46Speaker 05

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• 13:49Speaker 03

  The album was released on your birthday.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, December 28, 2004, my 26th birthday.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  You know, you're speaking about taking the name Legend, but up until that point, you had also received a lot of no's, right? When you were attempting to, you know, release your debut album. So how were you able to have that confidence within yourself, even though parts of the music world was telling you that you weren't a legend? Not even so much you weren't a legend, like you weren't even good enough to get started?

• 14:21Speaker 02

  Well, part of it, I think, was, like I said before, all that preparation, all that time before I'd been practicing, I'd been performing. I had people telling me how good I was, you know? And so they were, you know, giving me confidence, giving me self-esteem. And then I'm working with Kanye, I'm working with a couple other producers, and we're making music that we love, we're proud of, we're excited. And I think a big part of making it as an artist is having the audacity to believe that you have something special to offer. And we had that, like, we felt we were on to something. The whole Good Music Crew, Kanye, myself, all of us were on each other's records,

• 15:03Speaker 02

  helping each other build our catalog and our repertoire. And we felt like we had something new and something special to offer. Kanye's making College Dropout, I'm listening to Jesus Walks. I'm like, this is gonna change the world. We're writing songs together for my album. I'm like, this is different than anything else anybody else is doing right at this moment. And we just felt like we had something special to offer. And every time someone told me no, I was like, oh, they're wrong. I'm like, oh, they'll figure it out sooner or later. They're wrong, but I know we're on to something. I know we have something special to offer. I believed that probably a couple years before I got signed.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  And if I'm honest now, they were right to some extent. Like, we still needed to do some more work to get the music right. But I think we needed that almost irrational belief in ourselves to really make it to where we needed to make it. President Obama calls it audacity. I think you need that audacity to believe that you have something special that's not just ordinary, not just run of the mill, but something that could've changed the world. And we believed that about ourselves, and I think that helped propel us forward. So every time someone told us no, we were just like, oh, they're wrong. And we're going to prove them wrong.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  What was that run like, though? What was it, you know, you drop your album, you know, it's College Dropout, but there's also like B from Common? Like, it was, it was a time where everything-

• 16:41Speaker 02

  What a time, what a time. So it started with, I think it really started with Kanye producing a few tracks on The Blueprint, which came out 9/11/2001, on actual 9/11. So Blueprint came out September 2001. Kanye and I met a few months before that. And he wasn't known as an artist yet, but he had these like three or four tracks on The Blueprint that, and one of them was the first single, "H to the Izo." And I think that was the beginning of everything for all of us. So I met Kanye earlier that year because his cousin was my roommate. We went to college together. We lived together in New York for a few years.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  And his cousin Devon was like, you should meet my cousin Kanye. He just moved here from Chicago, and you guys should work together 'cause, you know, Kanye's starting to make some moves in the industry. He's doing some tracks for Rockefeller. He might have some tracks on the new Jay-Z album. So we meet at a place called Jimmy's Uptown in Harlem, a club I used to play at. And then a few months later, we start working together. And it didn't happen immediately, but we started to like figure out, oh, we got some chemistry, and we're making some records that are special. And then he was struggling for a while to be known as an artist because everybody loved his beats, but they were like, he can't really rap. He's a producer.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  And I think it really took his accident. He got in a car accident out in LA. He made Through the Wire, and he self-funded the video, self-funded the mixtape that Through the Wire was on. And it made everybody pay attention. It made Rockefeller, who had signed him, but really wasn't planning to do anything with him. They had signed him, but they really signed him because they wanted him as a producer, not because they thought he was actually gonna succeed as a rapper. So they sign him, and he's kind of on the shelf for a while until he invests in himself and says, we're going to put Through the Wire out. We're gonna put this mixtape out, we're gonna make the video.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  And then he started to gather a lot of buzz. And in the meantime, I'm behind the scenes, playing on a bunch of his records on College Dropout, playing on tracks that he's producing for other artists. And then finally, College Dropout comes out, February 2004. Through the Wire had done well. The slow jam song with Twista and Jamie had done well. And he sold like 400,000 copies the first week, which was a huge first week for any new artist, for anybody. After that, all the labels that had turned me down before were like, oh, we gotta sign whoever's next on Kanye's label. And I was next, and Columbia signed me. And we had multiple offers from multiple labels.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  And that happened in May 2004. So February, College Dropout comes out. May, I get signed. And in what, it's gotta be one of the quickest turnarounds from getting signed to putting an album out. We put the album out December 2004, which, you know, seven months after I got signed, because the music was already ready. And all we had to do was re-record some of it, get the features. We got Snoop, just tie up some loose ends, and the album was ready to go. And we put out the first single in August, "You Still Love You." And then we put out the second single, Ordinary People, a couple months later, and there we go.

• 20:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. From an athlete perspective, though, when you were getting no's, like, we get told no, but you gotta get bigger, you gotta get stronger. You gotta change something.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:24Speaker 04

  At no point did you say, I need to change, or did you change anything with your-

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Well, they were telling me like, I don't hear a hit here, or, mm, keep working on the songs. Clive Davis said it, like, L.A. Reid said it, Sylvia Rhoades said it. Like, all the legends of the executive world were saying, oh, I don't hear it yet. And part of me was like, fuck, mm, you know, like- I know this music is beautiful, I know this is incredible, they just don't get it. But I still kept trying to write more and trying to improve what I had. So I think it still pushed me to continue to try to improve, even though I thought they were wrong. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

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• 21:22Speaker 00

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• 22:00Speaker 00

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• 22:11Speaker 05

  John, I'm a grandmother's boy. I lost my grandmother almost three years ago now to dementia.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  I'm sorry.

• 22:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's life. But I got an opportunity to kind of, you know, share that time with her. You lost your grandmother young.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 05

  And you saw your mom battle-

• 22:28Speaker 02

  She was in her late 50s, yeah.

• 22:29Speaker 05

  Right, you saw your mother battle addiction.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:32Speaker 05

  Did staying busy, chasing your own career and dreams, did that, did achievement, was that the way for you to cope? Or how did it-

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think I tried to make myself as busy as possible, especially in high school, because in my hometown, I grew up in Springfield, Ohio. I'm there, living with our dad and my three siblings. And in the same town, my mother's there, but we're not seeing her. She's addicted to drugs. She's estranged from us as a family. And I think I wanted to distract myself as much as possible, so I didn't have to think about the fact that I lost my mother. And I, and I was close to my mother, I was close to my grandmother, her mother, she was close to her mother. And I think that's what sent her into depression, sent her into addiction, was the fact that

• 23:24Speaker 02

  this woman who she was so close to passed away. And as I've grown and as I've experienced life, I've had multiple friends tell me similar stories, that when their mother's mother died, they lost their mother for a while. And we lost my mother for a while. And thank God, she's back in our lives now. She's healthy, she's clean, all the things. She's found love and we're so happy. All of that's great. But I've found that for multiple friends of mine, their mother really went through it when they lost their mother. I found that, you know, it's not an uncommon thing.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  And we have to have as much grace as possible with the people we love when they're going through their own mental health struggles. And it taught me a lot about patience, about forgiveness, about grace, and just especially how people deal with trauma and loss.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  Well, the thing, I think what's ironic, I guess, would be the word, the word there is, your mother is grieving the loss of her mother, but you're grieving the loss of yours too.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  But she's still there.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's alive, but she wasn't in our lives. And we felt like we'd lost her because she was in such a dark place for a while.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  How difficult was that, though, to know that your mother is in town, she's just not with you?

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Oh, it was hard. And like I said, I think I tried to distract myself as much as possible. And, you know, I was successful at distracting myself. I was like a straight A student, number two in my class, student body president, doing music, doing everything. And so I successfully distracted myself, but it was still distracting myself, and I wasn't dealing with it emotionally.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  Did you ever get to the point to where you could, to where you did deal with it? Or was the reconciliation-

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I have now. I think I have now. And I think just living life, learning, forgiving, and just having more perspective has been good. Because you just see, like, me and my wife have gone through loss together. She just lost her dad, we lost a baby together. And you just start to understand what trauma does to people, what loss does to people. And I think I'm much better equipped to deal with any of those situations now than I was back then.

• 25:50Speaker 03

  You seem different than your wife a little bit?

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, we're different.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  You seem a little different.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  How-

• 25:56Speaker 02

  I think we're like a good yin and yang. We're like a good combination. Because she is what I'm not, and I am what she's not in a lot of ways. And it works.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  When you're sharing what you guys went through and losing, was it Jack?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  We lost Jack.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, and losing, and losing Jack. What was the process of getting to the point where you both said, okay, we're going to share this with the world, the same way we share all the good that happens to us?

• 26:23Speaker 02

  It was really her idea. And I was reluctant, because I'm not one that loves to share, like, when things are going wrong. Like, I'm happy to share all the good things. But like, it's never my first instinct to share when things go wrong. But her point was like, we told them we were having a baby. Everybody knew we were pregnant. And we can't just, like, disappear this child without, like, talking about it. And she was right. Like, I was reluctant, but she was right. Because her talking about it, first of all, she was correct about the fact that everyone knew we were pregnant. So you got to tell people when the baby is gone.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  And then secondly, so many women out there go through this situation. Like, so many couples, so many families go through this. And there's so much pregnancy loss, but it's often not discussed. So the women and the families that go through it often feel like they're alone. And her talking about it, she was one of the earliest celebrities that I know of that actually, like, really openly talked about it. And I, still to this day, will meet people, even when I'm by myself, that tell me how important it was to them that Chrissy said something about it. She'll meet people, like, at the grocery store, at the airport. They're like, thank you for sharing that, because it made me feel like I wasn't alone.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  And they tell their story to her, which is a lot, you know? Because she has to, like, receive a lot of people's trauma, because she's talked about hers. But it's clear that it had a real effect on people, and it was the right thing to do at that time, even though I was reluctant to do it.

• 28:09Speaker 04

  You say you like to talk about the good stuff, but speaking of something, I don't want to say bad, but emotional, did you have to adjust to that, being famous? Like, because if you don't want to tell bad stuff, now you're famous-

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  -telling stuff that's not happening.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  Well, things have evolved, because like, at the beginning of my career, there was no social media. And there were tabloids, there was, you know, TMZ and all those things. But there was no social media. So, and there were no camera phones. So I feel like we had a little more, like, privacy, and it was more of a choice when you were putting yourself out there. But as my career has moved on, the world has just opened up in so many different ways. And there's social media, there's everybody having a camera phone. So you're never really alone, you never really have privacy. Anytime you're out in the world, people can know what you're doing, people could broadcast what you're doing to the world.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  So that's taken some adjustment, but I think because it happened little by little over time, like, we just kind of gradually adjusted to it. The thing I like about social media is that it gives us control over what we communicate. My publicist is here. But it kind of like disintermediates, like, it takes the layers out from between you and the public. So you can decide what you want to post. You can decide how you want to communicate to the world. And I believe I'm smart enough, savvy enough, wise enough, to make the right choices about what I post and what I don't post.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  And so I like having that control now, that we didn't have when I started my career.

• 29:54Speaker 05

  John, I love doing these sit downs and these shows for a few reasons. One, you get to meet people who you are obviously a fan, a big fan of yours. You get to learn about them and the research that you do. And you also get to learn, simply learn. For example, I didn't know what an EGOT. I didn't have a clue what that, what that was.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  I didn't know what it was either.

• 30:16Speaker 03

  You know this?

• 30:17Speaker 04

  What is EGOT?

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Emmy, Grammy, Academy Award Tony. That's right.

• 30:22Speaker 04

  Oh, that was damn near-

• 30:23Speaker 03

  And he like a C-GOT, though, because he's the sexiest man alive, too. I was just saying. I'm surprised you ain't light-skinned him yet.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  Does he not count?

• 30:32Speaker 04

  It was coming. Oh, no, he's red, he's with us right there.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  You in the group, brother.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Oh, I know I'm in the group.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. Steph, I let Barack in too. So, yeah, yeah, we got a fleet of them. Now Boris, Boris Kojo was in the same room with us.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Boris Kojo, okay.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Y'all got the new boy on Different World. He got light eyes, yeah, he's a new one.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, light-eyed one? Oh, we really like them.

• 30:53Speaker 05

  This guy is crazy. But let me finish asking my question.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Kanye had that line, don't make sure he's light-skinned, he'll never, ever come back in style.

• 31:01Speaker 05

  No, so when you reach that level of status, like what else is it to like not achieve? But what are you chasing? Is there anything you're chasing?

• 31:12Speaker 02

  I I'm chasing excellence. Not that I don't feel like I've ever achieved it before, but I'm chasing it every time. I believe that I have to prove myself to my audience every time, that I'm worthy of their attention, worthy of their ears, worthy of them buying a ticket to my show. And I can't simply rest on what I've done before. I feel like I have to keep raising the bar for myself. And I have to go into every album thinking that the next album needs to be the best album that I've ever made. And I've gone into this last album like that. I've gone into every album before that with that mentality. And you never know what you're going to actually achieve.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  You never know how the album is going to land with people. But at least go into it with the mentality that you have to prove yourself. And that's the way I go into it every time.

• 32:09Speaker 03

  And you talked about like the way you kind of overachieved as a young man, as you were distracting yourself. To be 15 years old and to write, I want to become a famous musician musician so I can use my power to help people, right? My platform to help people.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  I wrote that in a Black History Month essay competition. I was 15. I they the question was simple. How do you plan to make Black History?

• 32:37Speaker 03

  Was it McDonald's?

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Yes, McDonald's sponsored it. It was an essay competition in our regional area. And I won the competition. And I said, I'm going to become a famous artist. I'm going to use my success, my platform, to make change in the community, to advocate for my people. And I'm literally living that every day right now. And I just feel so grateful that the thing that I aspired to do when I was 15, the vision that I have for myself, I'm able to live it.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  You are a very soft spoken person. You you you sang in these in these beautiful ways, even when talking about cheating, which shouldn't make sense, but.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  I make it sound innocent.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, you do. But when you are standing up for the community, I feel like you say that with your whole chest.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  Every single time. What is it about your foundation, your your principles, your background that make that responsibility so important to you?

• 33:37Speaker 02

  I think growing up in a family full of preachers helps.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  So, you know, I'm just used to people saying things with their chests. And like, like, I grew up just with all these people that spoke in public a lot and spoke with conviction and righteous indignation and with moral authority. And so I think I inherited some of that, maybe genetically, but also just through observation, seeing that. And then I also grew up reading about civil rights heroes that stood up for something. I I read about Dr. King. I I read his books, I read his writings. And, you know, I was a young kid. I was a nerdy kid. I loved history and politics and and civil rights. Like, I loved studying about those things

• 34:24Speaker 02

  and reading about black people that fought for us made me feel proud. And it set an example for like who I wanted to be in the world. And I wanted to be an artist, but I was like, I want to be the kind of artist that's also an activist. And my examples of that were people like Harry Belafonte and Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin and Mahalia Jackson and Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. And so many of our artists knew that their success came with other responsibilities, that it wasn't enough for them to just succeed for themselves and for their artistic career. But they had an opportunity to take that success

• 35:08Speaker 02

  and use it to give back and to lift up our people. And so I saw that, I knew that. And I knew that that was an opportunity that I had as someone who loved to make music and wanted to be an artist. And that's what I said for myself, I want to be that.

• 35:24Speaker 04

  But that's going to affect the bottom line sometimes. Do you ever take that into account?

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, possibly. But my bottom line is fine, first of all.

• 35:32Speaker 04

  Well, we know, we know. I'm a pocket, I'm a pocket watcher. First thing I look at net worth.

• 35:39Speaker 04

  That's legendary.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Don't always believe what you see on those net worth sites. Them net worth sites be all over the place. You never know if it's true. But the point being, I've built a really successful career, but I've never not said what I believe when it came to justice, politics, the candidates I support, the causes I support. And I'm going to continue to do that. And I think my audience expects that from me and they respect that. Like, they know I'm going to tell my truth. And I think a lot of my fans love that about me. So I'm sure I lose people from it, but I think I've also gained people from it as well.

• 36:19Speaker 05

  What would be surprising to us or some of your fans to know that it's something that you're not good at? That you kill yourself trying to perfect?

• 36:28Speaker 02

  It's surprising. Surprising. I I'm not a good athlete, but I don't think that's surprising.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  I grew up in a family that a lot of, a lot of my family members were very good athletes. They could ball, they could play football, all those things. But it skipped me. And thank God I'm really good at music because.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  So when you have the strong convictions you have, especially as the social climate has changed, right? You you get into your career and a big part of who you became early was because of Kanye. You guys have differing political views. And not to get in on the views, but what has that taught you about friendship?

• 37:14Speaker 03

  Because friendships change because of a lot of those things.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think it's fair for friendships to change because of that. Because when you see enough of someone's point of view and their perspective,

• 37:32Speaker 02

  I don't think everyone has to agree on everything to be friends. But I think you have to have at least similar values and like a moral connection that you align on. And so I think

• 37:49Speaker 02

  everybody shouldn't break up friendships just because they're not voting for the same person. But I do believe that there are times when values are not aligned. And maybe that means your friendship isn't going to be a successful friendship. And that's okay. It's okay. It's okay. And and you got to find your tribe of people that that you align with better. It's also fine to disagree with your friends and challenge each other and push each other and help each other grow. But I think there needs to be a foundational alignment of values.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  Can you separate the art from the artist? And in that with the differing opinion, differing morals, but still say, he's talented?

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Oh, it's clear he's talented. It's clear he's made some of the best music of this generation, of the past 20 years. Like, it's abundantly clear. We've made some of it together. And

• 38:47Speaker 02

  he's also put out some awful energy, some hate into the world. And it made me sad, honestly, to see it. Like, to see him put out a song called How Hitler is, like, it was stunningly offensive. Like, knowing the amount of death and destruction that Hitler caused in the world, knowing the hate he had for Jews, for black people, for all sorts of people that weren't who he preferred. And then to know that someone who is so gifted, such a great artist, deployed their artistry for that,

• 39:31Speaker 02

  to praise that man, like, that was awful. It was sad. And it was like a stunning descent from the heights of where Kanye has been in his life. I'm glad he's apologized for it. And I hope he will continue to do the work to like atone for the evil he put in the world. That was like pure evil.

• 39:58Speaker 00

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• 40:57Speaker 05

  From one successful producer to another and and Pharrell. How how hard or is it even hard to have done what you've done over the last 20 years and reached that those levels of success? To be able to remain coachable and and trust someone as.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think you, I think all of us have to be humble to a point, you know? Doesn't mean don't believe in yourself, don't believe in your ideas, but also have some humility and accept the fact that there's other people with great ideas too. Pharrell has more than established himself as one of the great producers of the last 30 years. He's also like creatively in multiple like media, multiple forms of creativity. He's shown himself to be a genius. And so when he's giving me his thoughts, when he's giving me input, when he's giving me advice, I'm going to listen. Doesn't mean we're always going to agree. It doesn't mean I'm always going to do everything

• 41:58Speaker 02

  that he thinks I should do. But I'm definitely going to listen. And.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Part of the creative and collaborative process is kind of a negotiation where you're hearing what they're saying, they're hearing what you're saying, and then you try to figure out, how do we incorporate all of this input into making the record the best it can be? And the goal is that the record wins, the music wins, the art wins, nobody's ego has to win, but the product has to win, the art has to win, and I think we've accomplished that with this album.

• 42:32Speaker 04

  I gotta ask, but that point, is there, do you ever have to go to somebody else? Where's the tie? Pharrell says, "No drums." You say, "We keeping these damn drums." Like, y'all, y'all flat out say, "Drums, no drums."

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Well, we had, my, our mutual friend KP, Kwan Prather, was our A and R on the project. So KP, look him up, but he's been a part of a lot of amazing records over the years, from a lot of the Arista records that came out of Atlanta, from Outkast to Usher, he's been a part of those records. He was my A and R on my first few albums at Columbia, Get Lifted, Once Again, et cetera. He has impeccable taste, and he also knows me and Pharrell very well. So, he was actually the tiebreaker.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  Somebody need to be.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  He was actually the tiebreaker, where he would be like, "Well," and he would come to me, like, "You know what I think, this, blah, blah, blah," and then he would say the same thing to Pharrell, like, "You know, actually, John's got a point there." And he, I think, has the grace and the tact and the understanding of how to, like, negotiate between different artists. He's an artist himself, he's a songwriter himself, a DJ himself, and, like I said, he's built a trust level with both of us, that he was actually the only tiebreaker.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  I have a, I have a question that I probably, I need help answering for myself. Like, when Pharrell says, you know, you, you learn in these things. Earlier, you said you were chasing excellence, which feels like a never-ending journey.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  Right? So, so what?

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  What is excellence to you?

• 44:12Speaker 02

  Well, I think you just know it when you hear it, you know, when you feel it, when you get those chills. Like, when we put out our Fireflies video, last single we put out, I'm like, "Yo, this is incredible." Like, I, I'm so proud of what we've done. I love the song, I love the arrangement, it was a true collaboration, from songwriting to arranging, to producing, to working with Paul Hunter to make the video, and I'm just so proud of every aspect of how we launched it and how it's gone out into the world. Every lyric, every string swell, every horn swell, like, everything about it makes me

• 44:57Speaker 02

  proud. And so, I'm chasing that feeling, literally every time. I wanna feel that, that I'm so proud of this record. I love how it makes me feel when I hear it, I love how it makes other people feel when they hear it. I'm chasing that feeling every single time.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  Well, so, my, I, I started that question to get to this question. Most addicts continue to chase the first high.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 45:21Speaker 03

  Right? Get Lifted, which I think is a, a great name for that. Like, when it hit, everybody knew. You weren't questioning it, I know Kanye wasn't questioning it, hell, when I first heard it, I wasn't questioning it.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were proud of it.

• 45:33Speaker 03

  Is it, how hard is it to follow something like that? Can you ever get that feeling back? Or is it a different feeling of excellence?

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Like I said, maybe I'm just irrationally confident, but I'm like, I believe that I can, every time, keep going back and making something that will be my best work. I truly believe it. I truly believe it every time. I believed it when I made Once Again, I believed it every subsequent album, and I think I'm just gonna keep believing it. Hopefully.

• 46:08Speaker 04

  Hopefully.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Inshallah.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  Well, with Muse, what, what's, you were chilling for a second, now you gonna jump back on with, you know, it's gonna be well anticipated with the names you have on there.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:23Speaker 04

  What made, what jumped, what jumped you back out?

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Like I said, I believe the next one can be the best one, and we worked so hard and put so much creative energy into this one, I was like, this could be the best one.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  How have you adjusted to the changes in music, and to the, the way music is digested?

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 03

  Right? And the way music is quantified?

• 46:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 03

  Even the, the sonic changes in what music is today, when you have a long tenured career like yourself?

• 46:53Speaker 02

  I, I think I'm not influenced at all by the sonic changes. Like, I don't use autotune still, like, I, I'm like, "No, I'm not, I'm not chasing them. I'm gonna be myself, I'm gonna be authentic to my own artistry, to my own ear, to what makes me proud and what I believe will move my audience." But you do have to adjust, I think, on the marketing side, on the business side, because there are just different ways of reaching people now, and you have to find them where they are. Like, we weren't doing podcasts back 20 years ago, there was no such thing as a podcast

• 47:35Speaker 02

  20 years ago, there, there's just different ways to reach people now than there were before, and you adjust to that. But I don't think it's made us change the way we make music at all, and maybe that's wrong, maybe I, I should be like, out, like, figuring out the exact, you know, way to adhere to the algorithm and, and chase where the algorithm is going, but I don't know how to create that way. The only way I know how to create is to follow my muse, no pun intended, but follow my creative instinct, follow my ear, informed by all the music I know, all the music I've loved,

• 48:20Speaker 02

  all the music I've listened to, all of my influences, and then that sets a bar for me for what the standard is, and chase that standard. I can't chase the algorithm, I can't, like, I don't know how to.

• 48:35Speaker 03

  How you like chasing kids?

• 48:36Speaker 02

  I have four of them, and, yeah, they're a handful.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  Like, with that part, though, like, as, as you continue to grow, as the man you show us you are, and the family person, the husband, the father, how has that influenced, though, the way you move about life and making sure that those people are proud of who John Legend is, John Stevenson is, every day?

• 49:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, my wife and I are always thinking about the example we set for our kids, because I think way more than what you say to them is what you show them, the example you show them, that's gonna affect how they live and what their moral standards are and all those things. So, we're always thinking about setting the right standards for our kids, what it means to be a good person in the world, to contribute to the world. I want them to see the way I work and aspire to work that hard and with that kind of passion on whatever they love.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  I want them to see the way I treat strangers and aspire to be kind and graceful. I want them to see the way I studied in school and apply that level of, like, energy and, and grit to the way they study, all of that. So, you know, I, I want them to be awesome.

• 50:10Speaker 03

  And I think we all do.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  But some of it's telling them, but a lot of it's showing them.

• 50:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, John, before I ask the biggest question, I do wanna know, on Birds, Birds Don't Sing.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:23Speaker 05

  Did you, did you cry? Because I, I see what the clips did there, they talked about their, their mother, their father, and, and I'm sure as you were singing it, it kinda took you back to your grandmother, your mom, because I cried working out.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I believe I did cry early on, not when I first recorded it, but after listening to it. And at the time, when I recorded it, I didn't write the chorus, Pharrell, I think, wrote the chorus, and the demo that I received was in Pharrell's voice, but they really wanted me to sing it. And I listened to it, and I was like, "This is beautiful, it's moving," and I really put a lot of effort into getting it right. Like, I wanted to do, I wanted to do right by them, because I knew the song meant a lot to them. And I sent it back to them, and they, my guy Eddie Blackman's here today, and he was

• 51:20Speaker 02

  like our conduit in getting the song to me and then sending it back to him, and I think Pusha said to Eddie, like, you could tell he really cared about getting it right, like, he really put a lot into this. And honestly, that's the reason why Pharrell ended up wanting to do a whole album with me.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Got you.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Because how I sang on this song that they sent me, how I put so much love and energy into getting it right, he's like, "Can we do a whole album together?" And, yeah, that's what happened.

• 51:52Speaker 05

  I, I think that's the, I think that's the algorithm. That's what people love about you, your intentionality and how you move with purpose.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  That's all I know how to do. Honestly, that's all I know how to do. Like, I don't know how to not do that, and I don't know how to game this new system and get the right TikTok song, any of that. Like, I don't know how to do that. All I know is how to put my heart and soul into every song that I make, put care and intention into making it excellent and beautiful and moving, and like, that's all I can do.

• 52:24Speaker 05

  Right. And I think people will definitely fall in love with that.

• 52:28Speaker 04

  I gotta ask, because you, you said, you'd be brought up college dropout. You're not, you're a summa cum laude or something.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  I was a college graduate.

• 52:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, you're a college graduate, but then you talk about, we know what, Pusha T.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  Summa cum laude is not a thing.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  What is that, what is that, salutin' cum laude?

• 52:40Speaker 02

  I was magna cum laude.

• 52:42Speaker 04

  I don't speak Latin.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Summa cum laude is also a thing.

• 52:44Speaker 04

  Okay, something.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, summa is higher than magna. I was second level.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 52:49Speaker 02

  If I had a 3.8, I would've been summa, but I had a 3.7, so I was magna.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  He definitely talking about something.

• 52:54Speaker 04

  Oh, no need to do that. That's Latin, see? I got 36 college credits. I got out of there. But then, Pusha T, you work with Clips.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:03Speaker 04

  Pusha T, he's not, he's not selling milk. He's pushing drugs. We know that. You're not, you don't live that world. You didn't grow up like that. You don't live that life. But you hang around. Jay-Z, like dudes you're around are street dudes.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  I grew up with street guys, like, even though I was like, I grew up in church and I was sheltered for the first 10 years of my life. My mother was addicted to drugs. My, I had good friends that got locked up for dealing drugs, people I grew up with in my neighborhood. So, I wasn't that far removed. Like, people see me and they think I'm so polished and well-educated and all this stuff. But, part of the reason I got so involved in criminal justice reform was because I was pretty close to folks that got locked up. I have people working for me that I grew up with, that spent time in prison. And, like, even though they see me and they

• 53:59Speaker 02

  think, "I couldn't have touched that. I couldn't have been a part of that." Like, I wasn't that far from it. And, the Firefly song that we just put out, really is about that. It's about being that one that gets away. Being that one that makes it out of the hood. Being that one that escapes the circumstances you're in and goes off to achieve things. And, that's who I was. And, it doesn't mean that there wasn't trouble all around me that I could have gotten into, but I just managed to avoid it.

• 54:32Speaker 05

  What's your biggest pivot or pivots in life? That, like, that's the one moment you can look back on and say, "Because this happened to me or for me, I am who I am today."

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know if it's one thing. I think, making that choice to go away for college, put me in Philadelphia, put me in a city where music was happening all around me, put me in a position to where I ended up playing at a church, where I met a choir member that knew Lauryn Hill, put me on that album, put me in the room with Kanye eventually, because I met my roommate that was Kanye's cousin there. So, like, all these things happened because I made that choice to get away. Like we talk about in Firefly, go away from home,

• 55:22Speaker 02

  like, expand your horizons, expand your world. And, it just opened me up to all kinds of opportunities.

• 55:30Speaker 03

  Muse is out October 23rd?

• 55:32Speaker 02

  October 23rd.

• 55:33Speaker 03

  What can we expect to hear from John Legend and Pharrell?

• 55:38Speaker 02

  I'm so proud of this album. I think it's beautiful. I think there are hints of my career, hints of Pharrell's career prior, but it's new. It feels like something neither of us has done before. You'll hear pieces of who I am and pieces of who he is, but it's a new combination and it's special. He had a vision when he called me after we did the "Birds Don't Sing" track. And, he was like, "We're gonna make the new Black James Bond soundtrack. We're going to make it cinematic and orchestral, but all with 808 drums and hip-hop drums underneath. And, people are not ready for this. It's gonna

• 56:20Speaker 02

  be something different and something special." He told me that, like, 18 months ago. Actually, almost two years ago. He told me that. And, I was like, "Let's try it." And, I didn't know, like, I didn't know, because sometimes you get in a room with people and it just ain't clicking. The chemistry's not right. But, it was right. We made something special, beautiful. And, I can't wait for people to hear it.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's, I think it's gonna be amazing. I mean, everything each of you have done individually, so I can only imagine and continue to get excited about the collaborations. If it does fail, y'all for sure could put out a skincare line, though.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  Well, that's funny, because we both have skincare lines. He has one and I have one called Loved One. And, it's out. You can go to loved01.com to check out what we do. And, we're on Amazon, all those good things. And, you can get your skin right.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, y'all at the top of the list of Black Don't Crack, though. Both of them, man. But, nah, we appreciate your time, man.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  Appreciate you guys. I'm so happy to be on the show, honestly. I love what you guys do. And, I'm happy to be here.

• 57:25Speaker 04

  Man, thank you, brother.

• 57:26Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  Hey, them boys, they don't age at all.

• 57:29Speaker 05

  You can already download that album, which is sick.

• 57:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:33Speaker 03

  Appreciate y'all.

• 57:34Speaker 04

  Man, appreciate you.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  That was fun.

• 57:35Speaker 05

  That was, though, really good.

• 58:06Speaker 00

  Having uncontrolled eosinophilic esophagitis, or E O E, can mean you're stuck in many ways. Like cutting your food into tiny pieces.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  Or stuck, chewing food for a long time.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Dupixent Dupilumab, a prescription medicine for patients one year and older weighing at least 33 pounds, can help with that. It's a breakthrough treatment that can reduce inflammation in the esophagus and improve swallowing.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  How about this? Dupixent is not a steroid. It proactively treats E O E, so you can get ahead of it.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Severe allergic reactions, including skin reactions, can occur. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing, or wheezing, or swelling of your face, mouth, tongue, or throat. Tell your doctor of new or worsening joint aches and pain, or a parasitic infection, or asthma. Don't change or stop other treatments without talking to your doctor.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  Feeling stuck with E O E? Start treating with Dupixent. Talk to your gastroenterologist or allergist today about Dupixent. Learn more at dupixent.com or call 1-844-DUPIXENT.