John Legend: he may sing about ordinary people, but John Legend's journey from piano-playing prodigy to platinum soul crooner has been filled with one big surprised after another. John Stone gets the scoop on the man who is dazzling the music world with his magic fingers

Interview, August, 2005 by Joss Stone

Music has been in John Legend's bloodstream from the beginning. Raised John Stephens by a musical family in Springfield, Ohio, John was at the piano from an early age, accentuating his classical training with the gospel tunes his grandmother taught him. He sang and played at the local family church and was always writing songs he would later perform in venues around the East Coast. But it wasn't until a friend introduced him to Lauryn Hill that his career really began. After playing on Hill's "Everything Is Everything" off her landmark record, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), Legend began an ascent that saw him working with such artists as Alicia Keys, Janet Jackson, Talib Kweli, Jay-Z, and the Black Eyed Peas, among others. With a slick moniker and Motown-era sound, Legend's mix of old-school virtue and hip-hop swagger has made his Kanye West-produced platinum-selling debut, Get Lifted [G.O.O.D./Columbia], one of the year's most talked-about albums.

JOSS STONE: Hello!

JOHN LEGEND: Hello! I'm looking forward to our show tomorrow. It's gonna be great. They said they sold out and then some.

JS: I know! How cool is that? Now, I wanted to ask you an important question: Lauryn Hill was my favorite person in the whole wide world. Is she really nice?

JL: She was really nice to me.

JS: How old were you when you played on her album?

JL: I was 19.

JS: Aw, how cute!

JL: She was working on the album when I was in college, and my good friend Tara Michel, who sings backup with me now, was singing on Lauryn's album.

JS: I love your backing singers, by the way. They move right, they sing right, they look right.

JL: Yeah, they're great. Tara's been with me forever--she introduced me to Lauryn. They had gone to high school together in New Jersey. So we went over to the studio, and we were chilling. I was just observing. And eventually Tara was like, "Lauryn, you've gotta hear my friend Johnny." So I played a little bit for her; she liked it and asked me to play on "Everything Is Everything."

JS: Oh, my God!

JL: And then a little bit later, they let me know she wanted me to audition for her band. I tried out but didn't make it. I was all ready to quit college and go on tour.

JS: Bet she's sorry now. Ha!

JL: Maybe it wasn't meant to be. [laughs]

JS: I always find that fate plays a huge part in things. So many times you're like, "1 wish I could've done that," but you look back and say, "Okay, I'm glad I didn't."

JL: You're right. When I was younger I thought I was supposed to have a record deal by age 19 or 20. When it didn't happen, I would get frustrated, but I would keep working and progressing and making new songs and recording new demos. And I kept thinking these people are stupid, they should've signed me a long time ago. But now I feel like this was the right time for my album to come out. So I don't regret any of it. I think it made sense.

JS: I first signed when I was 14, and I was writing the album for a year. And for a 14-year-old a year is a long time. So I felt like it took my whole life to write the album. And I was like, "Come on, can we just get it out?" And then by the time I got it out, it was like, okay, hold on for a second, it's going too fast. [both laugh]

JL: Yeah.

JS: It's like God has His own little plan for each of us.

JL: Exactly.

JS: When I was little, I used to say, "Well, by the time I'm 22 I'll be married, and then I'll have my big career, and then I'll go away and have kids when I'm 27. And it's so not going to happen like that.

JL: Probably not. It never happens how you plan it.

JS: When do you want to have kids?

JL: How old am I now? 26? I'll probably have 'em when I'm about 32 or 33.

JS: How many do you want?

JL: Three or four probably. I grew up in a family of four, so--

JS: Really? Same here. So, where were you born? I want to hear everything about you!

JL: I was born in Springfield, Ohio. It's a small town in the Midwest. We're actually going to go home and do a big, free concert in the park.

JS: Oh, wow! They'll love that.

JL: There's a new amphitheater that's opening, and we're going to do a big show, and my whole family's gonna come up onstage and sing the song that they do with me on the album.

JS: Wow! Your family's going to come sing with you?

JL: Yeah! They sing on track 13 on Get Lifted. That's them.

JS: No! Which one's track 13?

JL: "It Don't Have to Change." [sings] "Do you remember when the family was everything?" That's my whole family in the background and on some of the leads as well--my uncles, my dad, my brothers, my sister, my mother, my aunts, my grandmother, and my cousins. So, they're all gonna come to the show. It'll be a big thing. It'll be my homecoming, my first concert at home since the album came out. It's a free concert in the park, there'll be thousands of people there, so it should be really exciting.

JS: That's the loveliest thing. I think they're going to cry.

JL: Yeah, I might cry too.

JS: That's so great. So have you started your next record?

JL: Oh, yeah, I've already started writing. Well, I write pretty much all the time.