Episode 1137 - John Legend
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:WTF.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:What'd you do for the 4th of July?
Marc:Did you go crazy?
Marc:It didn't have that... I don't know where you live, but the vibe out here in the LA area...
Marc:With the fireworks was that this might be the last Fourth of July ever.
Marc:I don't know what you were feeling, but the urgency, the chaos, the sheer length, like generally I go to a Fourth of July party.
Marc:But this year, it wasn't so much as a party as it was just eight of us up on the hill.
Marc:Same place, my buddy Dan's house and Jen.
Marc:Eight of us distanced, masked for the most part up on the hill watching the fucking chaos.
Marc:Never seen more fireworks over Highland Park.
Marc:And if you've been listening to me for years, you know it's a bit of a thing.
Marc:But this year was like, this is it, man.
Marc:This might be the last time we ever fucking get to blow this shit up like this.
Marc:Let's fucking do it.
Marc:Today on my show, on this show, the one you're listening to, I'm going to talk to John Legend.
Marc:That guy is the nicest guy in the world.
Marc:And publicly, he's the nicest guy in the world.
Marc:You see him, you feel better.
Marc:It's like seeing some sort of Buddha or beacon of light.
Marc:And sure enough, he's kind of like that.
Marc:Kind of like that.
Marc:I enjoy talking to him.
Marc:It made me feel better because it's very difficult to sort of just deal with this full-on brain fuck.
Marc:Of this current moment in history.
Marc:It's just relentless.
Marc:Relentless.
Marc:And it just feels more and more out of our control because of the mass popularity of stupidity.
Marc:And believing in entitlement-based fairy tales or dumb-dumb Christian eschatology or fascist visions of white monoculture and or just fuck it, fuck it all.
Marc:I can definitely understand that last one a little.
Marc:And a little bit of the entitlement-based fairy tales one.
Marc:Fuck it.
Marc:Just the spread.
Marc:It's just, I can't.
Marc:I know a couple people that got the bug now.
Marc:A couple of comics went out and did the work and got the fucking virus.
Marc:Checking in with them to see how that's going.
Marc:And I'm sure to say, hey, idiot.
Marc:How you feeling, dummy?
Yeah.
Marc:Oh, by the way, I left you hanging on.
Marc:I got the COVID test back on Wednesday night, but too late to put it in the recording.
Marc:I tested negative as of Wednesday.
Marc:Okay, but it's day-to-day with that shit.
Marc:It's all relative to not...
Marc:You know, not not going out, you know, anywhere, not talking to anyone, not certainly not being maskless anywhere, which I wouldn't anyway, not rubbing my face on the surface of an infected person.
Marc:On a lighter note, Monkey is still with us.
Marc:My cat is still with us.
Marc:Buster is still an asshole, but Monkey is okay.
Marc:He's got the asthma bad, but he keeps hanging on.
Marc:He'll spend some time in the closet, a little time under the bed, and then some time on the bed, maybe a little time downstairs.
Marc:But again, I'm just trying to accept that.
Marc:That this is an older cat, not a tragic situation.
Marc:It's not some sort of extension of the passing of my girlfriend right into this cat.
Marc:Like I'm just being clobbered with the things I love leaving.
Marc:I'm not connecting them anymore.
Marc:And I understand what's happening.
Marc:I'm okay.
Marc:I'm a little grounded.
Marc:There's one thing about grief is it will definitely land you in you.
Marc:It's like that moment right before you know you're going to get into an accident.
Marc:That immediacy.
Marc:Grief kind of feels like that.
Marc:That type of presentness when it comes over you.
Marc:Grief will definitely land you in you.
Marc:That's what I feel.
Marc:And I miss Lynn.
Marc:And I did something...
Marc:The other day, you know, she used to make these stocks.
Marc:She's very into this bone broth business.
Marc:And she kind of was a big part of her way of eating.
Marc:And she would save all these pieces of squash and sweet potatoes and fennel bulbs and parsnips and all these leftover, you know, chicken carcasses and that.
Marc:So there's several bags of, you know, squash guts and things in the freezer.
Marc:And I'm like, all right, I'm going to bring her to life.
Marc:I'm going to make her soup.
Marc:I did it.
Marc:I went out and had a bunch of chicken backs frozen and three or four chicken carcasses.
Marc:Got those going for about eight hours and threw in a couple of bags of Lynn's squash guts and frozen vegetable pieces and
Marc:Cooked that overnight, threw some thyme in, some bay leaves like she did.
Marc:Now I've got a living sort of nourishing bit of lin with me now.
Marc:I froze a bunch of it, got some in the freezer.
Marc:I can heat it up like it is, add some chicken.
Marc:I can add it to greens.
Marc:I can whatever.
Marc:But the nourishing...
Marc:beauty of the Lynn Shelton bone broth squash stock is alive and with me today.
Marc:I'm happy to have the soup
Marc:I'm happy to receive all the love and condolences still.
Marc:And I got this interesting email from this guy, Stephen.
Marc:He said, today is the 49th day.
Marc:This was a few days ago since Lynn died in the Buddhist tradition.
Marc:And I'm a practicing jubu.
Marc:He says she has been moving through the bardos and is now free to move on.
Marc:Thank you again for your excellent podcast and genuine honesty.
Marc:Blessing, Stephen.
Marc:She moved through the bardos.
Marc:I don't know what any of that means, but does that mean like, okay, so she went through the, whatever happens between life and after you die, what happens at the beginning of after you die, now she's free to move on.
Marc:Does that mean reincarnation?
Marc:Does that mean she's shopping for a new vessel right now, Lynn?
Marc:Does that mean she's sort of circling the sphere, the globe, the cosmos, looking for that moment of conception, sort of eyeballing the many people fucking here and there and wondering like,
Marc:Where do I go?
Marc:Where do I where's my next vessel?
Marc:I don't know how it works.
Marc:I'm speculating.
Marc:I'd like her to be part of that process.
Marc:I'd like to think that she's out there with her sense of perception and consciousness deciding, you know, which would be a good vessel for.
Marc:I hope she picks an interesting new vessel, perhaps another gender, another ethnicity, the next phase.
Marc:Not an animal.
Marc:I don't I think that's punishment, isn't it?
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:I don't know how it works, but I was happy to hear that.
Marc:But ultimately, I hope that your fourth was okay.
Marc:My fourth was, you know, like I just said, I went to that thing.
Marc:But earlier, it had a very German-based fourth for some reason.
Marc:I sat on my porch and listened to the first four Cannes records, and then I finished watching The Marriage of Maria Braun, Fassbender film, but kind of
Marc:A little obsessed with Fassbender.
Marc:Watched Veronica Voss last week.
Marc:I've always been sort of obsessed with him.
Marc:But now, because of the Criterion channel, I'm wrapping my brain around the Fassbender oeuvre.
Marc:Is that how you say it?
Marc:Great stuff.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:Real art, man.
Marc:Real film art.
Marc:Like, what?
Marc:Like, what is that?
Marc:Why?
Marc:What?
Marc:Huh.
Marc:And he just did this.
Marc:He decided and he did.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So look, the new album is called Bigger Love.
Marc:It's available now wherever you get your music.
Marc:And I spoke to John Legend the night after the BET Awards where he won video of the year for Hire.
Marc:That's not for Hire.
Marc:He didn't get Hire.
Marc:It's for the song Hire.
Marc:And this talk obviously took place before his friend Kanye decided to run for president.
Marc:This is me and John Legend coming up.
.
Guest:hey hey john how are you how you doing mark i'm good good to see you sir it's good to see you sir hold on i think i was recording all this time another interview yeah i never stopped that one okay lots of things recorded okay i'm gonna save that one
Guest:yeah i've done that who knows what they're gonna hear some usually it's uh usually it's hours of nothing yeah i was actually in an interview after that one so they're just gonna hear the next interview and then they're gonna be so annoyed why because you did you did you talk more on that one
Guest:No, it's just about a complete different subject.
Guest:And they'll be like, why is this here?
Guest:But anyway, here we are.
Marc:Wait a minute.
Marc:What other subject could you be talking about?
Marc:Is there something we need to know?
Marc:Are you a specialist of some kind?
Guest:Well, I'm developing a coronavirus vaccine.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:There's no end to the talent.
Guest:No.
Guest:No, honestly, I so my interview was with the PGA about my the Pro Producers Guild about my production company.
Guest:And it was me and my fellow producing partners.
Guest:And we were like mentoring some up and coming young producers, the producers now.
Marc:OK, well, a couple of things.
Marc:I listen to the new record and I and I and I had a realization during the listening.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:That if you're not in a relationship or you're heartbroken for whatever reason, I don't know if this is a great record for you.
Guest:Yeah, well, it's interesting because... You threw one in at the end.
Guest:The end of the album, the last three of the last four songs are about...
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:About missing someone.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Being nostalgic, missing your first love.
Guest:So there's some of that, but definitely a lot of it is more toward, you know, the situation I'm in, which is, you know, I'm happily married in love and and I can write some celebratory songs about that sometimes.
Marc:No, I think it's beautiful.
Marc:It's a beautiful record.
Marc:But being a little heartbroken at this point in time, a lot of knowing how beautiful the record is, there were definitely moments where it's like, oh, yeah, I had I had that, you know, you know, and I now that you say that, my condolences, first of all, because I heard what happened.
Guest:Oh, thanks.
Guest:And and then when when you listen to that song, Remember Us, I actually cry.
Guest:Listening to that song now, the song Remember Us, which is number 13 on the album, that'll hit you pretty hard if you listen to it too much.
Guest:So I don't know if that's good or bad for you right now.
Marc:Well, I don't know.
Marc:I felt like it was actually pretty good because I feel like you have to have these feelings.
Marc:And I imagine that love songs in general are just as popular for people who are longing for it as they are for people who are in it or think they have that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think that a lot of love songs are aspirational.
Guest:Yeah, I can definitely see that.
Guest:And I've written love songs when I was very, very much single at the time as well.
Guest:And some of it's like like you said, imagining what it could be like.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Now, you know, it's in the record starts out with the you know, with a bit of I only have eyes for you.
Marc:And so is that is that the window through which you work this thing?
Marc:Because that song is like I just re-listened to that because I had to put it together and then, you know, listen to the Flamingo song.
Marc:And that's one of the most beautiful love songs ever written in pop music, really.
Guest:Well, I Only Have Eyes For You is magical.
Guest:And it's kind of from an era that I still like.
Guest:You know, I love doo-wop.
Guest:I love those tight harmonies.
Guest:I love my dad raised me on Motown, like the Temptations, the male quartet type groups.
Guest:And so when I think about my musical heritage and my musical upbringing,
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's what I'm thinking about.
Guest:And gospel, of course, as well.
Guest:But even gospel incorporated a lot of those same kinds of harmonies.
Guest:And so if you're getting to know me as a musician, knowing that about me, I think, is helpful to understanding everything that I do musically.
Guest:And what I loved about that particular song...
Guest:was bringing that old stuff to a new kind of world of music where the beats have the 808s and the sounds of like trap hip hop mixed with these old sounds of doo-wop and it works perfectly.
Marc:Yeah, I think the first time I ever witnessed that sort of unfolding, sadly, because it just it wasn't really my world was in that the story about, you know, N.W.A., that movie when Dre, you know, first did that in the in in whatever, you know, the it wasn't a club, but he was started to mix those beats with the older songs.
Marc:And it was that that moment of sort of like, oh, my God.
Marc:You can.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, hip hop is basically founded on that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, so much of hip hop was literally a DJ playing old records and a guy rapping over it or the guy DJing was also the rapper.
Guest:And so they were taking this music that people already knew and then putting their own spin on it, rapping over it, scratching over it.
Guest:And that is so much of the foundation of hip hop.
Guest:And so I've worked with a lot of producers who also work in hip hop.
Guest:And so a lot of times they'll be the kinds of guys that will use samples a lot.
Guest:And it's always that interesting blend of old and new.
Guest:And then, of course, you mentioned Dr. Dre.
Guest:We use the same sample he used on track number two on the album because he used an old David McCallum song called The Edge to make a song that's even more famous called The Next Episode with Snoop Dogg.
Guest:And we use that same sample on our second song on the album song called Actions.
Marc:But I think what's also, though, interesting is that, you know, in that first song, that, you know, it is sort of a an homage to those songs.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you're not doing like a standard sort of hip hop song.
Marc:You're doing another one of those kind of songs for a contemporary audience.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but we intentionally had sections where we did a little bit of both.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So the intro and the pre-chorus...
Guest:And the chorus sound like a doo-wop song.
Guest:I wanted to sing it like a doo-wop singer.
Guest:I wanted the lyric to sound like it wouldn't have been out of place on certain parts in the old song.
Guest:But then we have a section where we just kind of drop it low.
Guest:And it's like, spin it around, let it bounce.
Guest:Up and down, I think we found something.
Guest:Snack it, rub it down to the sound.
Guest:And then go back to the doo-wop.
Guest:So it's like intentionally going back and forth between the worlds.
Marc:But it really strikes me, though, you know, I don't know how you pull it off.
Marc:I mean, you obviously work constantly, but it does seem that, you know, you are able to bring together, you know, all of the different elements of the music you grew up in and the music that you live in and the people that you work with.
Marc:into your own voice that is uniquely yours, but you have a much broader palette than a lot of artists.
Marc:It seems to me that multi-generations can listen to a John Legend song and enjoy it the same way, that it's sourced in a history that everybody's familiar with, a language of pop music that just about anyone can relate to.
Marc:It doesn't seem like anyone's going to walk away from a John Legend song and go, fuck that guy.
Guest:What the fuck is he doing?
Guest:There's somebody saying that, I promise.
Guest:Fuck that guy.
Guest:I pissed off real estate agents this weekend.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:On my Twitter.
Guest:Well, I was talking because the Texas Realty Association said they weren't going to say master bedroom anymore.
Guest:And because it evokes language of slavery and all this stuff.
Guest:And I was like, are you guys serious?
Guest:Like, please work on actual real problems and not whether or not we call it a master bedroom.
Guest:And and then I said, you know, the real problem with realtors is that they've helped serve the function of business.
Guest:housing segregation and discrimination in the US because a lot of times they were guilty of steering, which is the process of not showing black people all the properties they're qualified for because they didn't want them in certain neighborhoods.
Guest:I said, that's a real thing to work on.
Guest:It's a real thing that still exists.
Guest:Newsday did a really in-depth article about that happening in Long Island.
Guest:uh just recently and it happens all over the country i said why don't you guys work on the real problem and they were really mad at me for saying that but uh really they're probably they're probably saying fuck that guy fuck that guy yeah and we're keeping master bedroom well i was fine with master bedroom i was like work on the real problem don't worry about i get it i get it i mean well it seems like there's a lot of those sort of uh you know cosmetic changes band-aids for for uh little things yeah what
Marc:Well, I mean, I love the new album.
Marc:And also, like, along the same lines is that it's very hard to sort of, because when someone says, like, you know, what style of music does John Legend do?
Marc:I mean, you do most of them, right?
Guest:Well, I think it's rooted in black music, but I grew up with gospel, soul, and doo-wop.
Guest:Those were, like, the main things that were in my house.
Guest:Those are the things my dad played, and those were my foundation.
Marc:But it seems like that Gary Clark song is almost a rock song, really.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think I've listened to everything.
Guest:It's all in me.
Guest:I hear all of it.
Guest:And and, you know, when I collaborate with other artists, they can bring out different things in me.
Guest:And and so working with Gary brings out one thing, working with, you know, Rafael Sadiq brings out another thing.
Guest:And it just I'm open to those kinds of collaborations where
Guest:they push me in different directions that will make the album more interesting.
Marc:Well, I mean, I think that it's a sign of your, I guess, your uniqueness that you can, it seems like collaborating is really, you know, where you started.
Marc:I mean, it seems like that's the foundation of who you are.
Marc:And what fascinated me in looking at some of the people you collaborated with is that, you know, as genius as many of the people you work with are,
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Who are you thinking about?
Marc:Let's just generalize.
Marc:But, I mean, the fact is that somehow or another, and I have to assume it's not just talent, you have an ability to sort of work with, collaborate, understand as much as it may bring, at this point in your career, collaborators may bring something to you, but you brought something to them, and I have to assume it was something...
Marc:Other than just your specific talent.
Marc:I mean, they can't be easy people to please some of them.
Marc:And you have to you must have some sort of muscle that enables you to to kind of kind of, you know, create symbiosis with even the difficult people.
Guest:Yeah, I was thinking about that, and I was like, well, what makes me the kind of collaborator that works with all types of people?
Guest:And I think part of it is being good at what you do well.
Guest:So, like, I'm a good pianist, I'm a good singer, I'm a good songwriter.
Guest:But also having humility, because when you have enough humility to be open and to really listen to other people's ideas and really take it in and realize that you'd be better off if you guys...
Guest:Did something together than if you did it separately.
Guest:Having that sense of humility, I think, makes it so that collaborations can go really well and really let the idea win, you know, the best idea.
Marc:But that's not something you're born with.
Guest:Um, you, I think you probably born with a disposition in that direction, but you get better at it too, because you, uh, you, you see what works in these situations.
Guest:And if you actually want it to work and you let your ego kind of take a backseat and you actually want it to just create something great, uh, then you, you start to figure out what
Guest:things you did in those sessions that made it work out.
Guest:And I think part of it is that openness, that humility saying, let's let my ego take a backseat to an extent.
Marc:Well, yeah, I can see that.
Marc:But like, I'm just curious about like how, you know, because, you know, some people can work with other people and some people can't, you know, and some people, you know, they can work with other people sort of, you know, begrudgingly because they have to.
Marc:But when you were growing up, when did you start doing the music?
Marc:Who was your primary champion?
Guest:So my grandmother was one of the first champions.
Guest:My mother was also.
Guest:So my maternal grandmother, she was the organist at my church.
Guest:And she helped teach me how to play gospel music.
Guest:My mother was the choir director.
Guest:And then my dad played the drums at church.
Guest:And so we grew up in church.
Guest:My grandfather was a pastor.
Guest:So we're literally like the first family of the church.
Marc:Was he a yelling pastor?
Guest:He was not.
Guest:He was very much more of a teacher.
Guest:He's more professorial.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:I think he actually lost out on members because he was so mellow.
Guest:He didn't put on a show like a lot of preachers that we grew up around.
Guest:So you would go to other folks' church, and their pastor was definitely more charismatic than my grandfather was.
Guest:But he was very bright and very well-read.
Guest:and very methodical about teaching the things he had learned in the Bible.
Guest:But other preachers were way more entertaining, no doubt about it.
Marc:So there was a lot of Jesus around.
Guest:Oh, so much Jesus.
Guest:So it's crazy.
Guest:After all that, I ended up playing Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar.
Guest:You had to.
Guest:I had to.
Guest:But as a kid, though, that was everything.
Guest:And our church that we grew up in was very...
Guest:Very fundamentalist.
Guest:So it's called the Pentecostal Church and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World.
Marc:He was a Pentecostal pastor and not charismatic?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:He was like an oddball.
Guest:But he was very much fundamentalist like the rest of his peers.
Guest:So, you know, women couldn't wear skirts above their knees.
Guest:They frowned upon jewelry and makeup.
Guest:And they frowned upon even listening to secular music.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Going to the movies.
Guest:Like it was very, very...
Marc:serious uh for the first um you know eight to ten years of my life i'd say about ten years but this is your family so like so this is your your mother's father's the pastor yes my mother's father and and and you're growing up in this house and there you can only listen to church music basically yeah at home yeah and who taught you how to play the piano
Guest:So my grandmother was part of it.
Guest:And then I also took lessons at a local music store.
Guest:So I was learning classical music there.
Guest:And my grandmother's teaching me gospel music.
Marc:So when did the dam break with the popular music?
Guest:Well, my parents got divorced.
Guest:So everything went to shit after that.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:They got divorced after my grandmother died.
Guest:My mother actually got really depressed after that.
Guest:And
Guest:things just started to fall apart in our home and our family um but yeah she died of a natural cause like what happened she died early she was like 58 years old and she had she had a heart failure and so it was shocking it was tragic my mom was extremely close with her and it just sent her into a spiral and so we were estranged from my mom literally for like 10 years because she got so depressed
Guest:She got so depressed.
Guest:She was on drugs for a while.
Guest:It was like a real mess.
Guest:And this was after being like the perfect mom before that she was homeschooling us.
Guest:She was, you know, directing the choir.
Guest:She was like exemplar mother for a long time.
Guest:And then after her mother passed away, she just went into the spiral and we lost her for a while.
Guest:And she's back now, thankfully, and she's healthy and
Guest:happy and where did she go it's fine she was in our hometown like in springfield ohio but we barely even saw her she was um addicted to drugs and it was like a a tough time and you and and who was who looked out was her father still alive was the pastor her father was alive um but he was starting to get into dementia at that point oh my god so who was taking care of you
Guest:So we were living with my dad and there are four of us kids and he was a single dad after they got divorced.
Guest:And that's when, you know, the rules kind of disappear.
Guest:Once once the parents get divorced, no one's checking to see if you're still listening to secular music.
Guest:So, you know, and by that time, you know, we're going to, you know, middle school and high school.
Guest:We listen to what our friends are listening to, which at the time, you know, it's like early 90s.
Guest:So it's like Jodeci, R. Kelly, Boyz II Men, Mariah Carey, Whitney, some hip hop.
Guest:So I didn't listen to a lot of hip hop as a kid.
Guest:I started listening to that more as, you know, in my late teens.
Marc:And also the old timey stuff.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And so my dad was always, you know, even despite being part of a church where he wasn't supposed to, he was always still into Motown and music.
Guest:and the old time stuff he listened to nat king cole right because i hear that stuff man i hear that stuff in you yes it's very much in me and i uh those artists are still part of who i am but also marvin gay nina simone curtis mayfield smokey um those are some other artists that are very much in my head when i'm writing and when i'm recording my voice and all those other things
Marc:It is sort of amazing that to be an artist like yourself, I can feel the presence of all that stuff, the ones that I know and even the ones that I don't know.
Marc:But again, it is all in service of your unique voice, which is not easy.
Marc:And it's an amazing strength that whatever that humility you're talking about, whatever was at the...
Marc:or the egolessness you're talking about that enables you to collaborate, at the bottom of that, it's not an empty well there.
Marc:It's a pretty strong foundation in you.
Guest:Well, yeah, and I credit my parents for that and just me loving the music.
Guest:I fell in love with it early, and I had never stopped.
Guest:I always wanted to be on stage.
Guest:I always wanted to be leading the choir.
Guest:I always wanted to be winning the talent show.
Guest:My dream when I was like seven was to be on Star Search.
Guest:You remember Star Search with Ed McMahon.
Guest:Of course.
Marc:Comedians used to do it too.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:Chappelle was on there.
Guest:And these were the dreams I had when I was young.
Guest:And I never gave up on it and just kept working at it.
Guest:And here I am.
Marc:What happened with your mom?
Marc:She would just come in and out of your life or what?
Guest:Yeah, by that point, like, barely saw her.
Guest:Like, I would go months without seeing her, and she was living, and our town's not big.
Guest:You know, it's like 70,000 people.
Guest:But I would barely see her in a year.
Guest:Was she just strung out?
Guest:Yeah, she was.
Marc:And emotionally volatile and, like...
Guest:Not even that volatile, more like it was sad.
Guest:I didn't want to be around her.
Guest:It was a source of shame at the time.
Guest:I was trying to put my head down and succeed in school.
Guest:I was a straight-A student.
Guest:I was the middle child that tried to hold everything together and be Mr. Perfect all the time.
Guest:My mom was like...
Guest:At the time, it just made me feel bad.
Guest:And so I just tried to avoid seeing her and just put my head into school and music and everything.
Marc:I think we just found it.
Marc:Your amazing ability to collaborate is... Middle child.
Guest:Middle child.
Guest:I was a fight breaker-upper between my older brother and my younger brother.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The diplomat.
Marc:Let's bring it all together.
Marc:We're one family here.
Marc:Conciliation.
Marc:Mediation.
Marc:And also order.
Marc:Order.
Marc:Can we just close the gap?
Marc:Can we just bring it in tight?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Keep the chaos out.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So, well, then how did it kind of turn around?
Marc:Did your mom get cleaned up or did she?
Guest:She got cleaned up and she never went to rehab.
Guest:She didn't go to rehab, but she got cleaned up.
Guest:It was like, really, she had a come to Jesus moment.
Guest:Literally, like she got back in touch with her faith and and that was helpful.
Guest:She started to surround herself with people that could help her come back and she came back.
Guest:She and.
Guest:She it's like she's never used since.
Guest:She looks incredible.
Guest:She looks younger than she is.
Guest:You know, she's 65 years old, looks younger than that.
Guest:She if you look at her now, you wouldn't even be able to tell she went through all that.
Guest:But she really did for quite a while.
Marc:Was she like destitute to that?
Marc:Was that like to that point kind of thing?
Guest:Like, yeah, she was not living a good life.
Guest:She was in a rough neighborhood on drugs and just it was not good.
Marc:But never got busted or anything?
Guest:oh yeah she went to jail oh yeah yeah for how long she she was never in for like an extended sentence it was more like you know they knew her down there in for a couple days right right i didn't even know what was happening at the time yeah uh because um like i said i was avoiding seeing her yeah yeah yeah and so it was all happening when during this time and i didn't know about it until later after she was clean your dad told your dad knew though
Guest:I don't know that he knew all that was going on.
Marc:So do they get along now, your folks?
Guest:Everybody gets along.
Guest:My mom's very much in my kids' lives.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Guest:And all her other grandkids' lives, she has, what, 10 of them now?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And she's, like I said, you would not be able to tell that any of this happened before.
Marc:And your dad's around, too?
Guest:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Guest:He's 70 and very healthy and he's good.
Marc:But they're not together.
Guest:They're not together.
Guest:He's remarried.
Guest:They actually got back together when she first came back.
Guest:So they got back together, got remarried.
Guest:He had been through a one stepmom during the interim period.
Guest:And then they got back together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:figured out they actually didn't want to be together anymore and they got divorced a second time and then my dad has since remarried recently uh with someone he met on a dating app wow modern love modern love it's so great that they're part of your life and the kid's life and that worked out oh and so she stuck with jesus is what happened
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And she definitely did.
Guest:And, you know, obviously, there's all kinds of reasons why people decide to get clean.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:There's all kinds of methods by which they do so.
Guest:But she didn't go to rehab.
Guest:But she was able to through faith and the love of her friends and family.
Guest:She was able to come back.
Marc:Now, with your work, so you started on piano, you stick with piano.
Marc:Do you play other instruments?
Guest:I do not.
Guest:The only time I took guitar lessons was to fake it for La La Land, and that was it.
Guest:I haven't done any since then.
Marc:And do you write all the songs on piano first?
Guest:A lot of them are written on piano first, but a lot of my songs are written in collaboration with other people.
Guest:So, you know, they may play the guitar.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you write in the studio a lot?
Guest:Yeah, I write in the studio and usually it's one or two other people in there with me.
Guest:And it's usually and sometimes we write with producers who their gift is more in creating cool instrumentals.
Guest:And so so they may play the keyboard.
Guest:They may be good with, you know, rhythm and
Guest:creating drum beats.
Guest:And so the collaborative process means we're all in this room together coming up with ideas, riffs, beats, hook ideas.
Guest:And then eventually a song comes from that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that's sort of what I was going to ask you at the beginning when we started talking about producers and you supporting young producers with the with the guild there.
Marc:Was that because I noticed on the records, especially on this new record, not only like on any given song, there's a half a dozen writers.
Guest:so a lot of those so it's the kind of division of labor and pop music these days so like i said producers a lot of times will make tracks and sometimes they're making them with you in the room you're writing the song together and they're building an arrangement around it and so they'll get writing credit for uh composing that music and building that beat but then the lyric and the melody is usually just written by you or you and one other person yeah so most of the things that i actually sing the things that come out of my mouth
Guest:The lyric and the melody are usually written by just me or just me and one other person.
Guest:But then the people that help create the music around it also get writing credit.
Guest:So you often see like two or three other names.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they're usually the producer and maybe their team to help them create the arrangement.
Guest:And then sometimes we have samples.
Guest:And so you'll see the names of the people whose song we sampled in the writing credits as well.
Guest:So like if you're looking at Ula, two or three of the names in that writing credit for that are the people who originally wrote I Only Have Eyes for You.
Marc:Alexander Dubin and Harry Warren.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:So those are guys that may not even be alive still that wrote the song many years ago.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And their estates are getting a little kickback from us sampling the song.
Marc:Well, I guess it's interesting that producers are really musicians mostly in their own right.
Marc:It's just that their instrument is a bigger palette of possibilities.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then sometimes their job is to hire people that make the music.
Guest:So sometimes the producer actually executes the actual instruments that you're hearing on the song.
Guest:So a lot of producers play keyboards.
Guest:A lot of them...
Guest:do drum programming, but they also have a Rolodex, or what, you know, they have contacts in their phone, and they call up a live drummer, they call up a guitarist they like to work with, or they call up a string arranger they like to work with, and part of their job as a producer is to do that.
Guest:But it's interesting because the thing I was talking about before was the producers guild in TV and film.
Guest:And so we were talking to producers in that sense.
Guest:But in the music business, of course, producers are the ones that bring the sound of the track together or bring the sound.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when did you how'd you learn all this shit, man?
Marc:I mean, it's like, when did that start?
Marc:I mean, was this like I know that you you did a track on Lauryn Hill's album when you were like a kid.
Marc:But I mean, before that, you know, was this were you learning how to do this?
Marc:How was it through collaboration that you learned all this stuff?
Guest:You start to learn it.
Guest:Well, when I was younger, I think I was learning just the ABCs of music.
Guest:So learning how to make a good song, learning how to collaborate with other musicians and make it all sound good together.
Marc:What was the first time you said, like, this is how a song works?
Marc:I mean, do you remember a song?
Guest:I remember writing songs at probably 11 or 12 times.
Guest:Like just the silliest of love songs that, you know, I thought would help me get a girl or something.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But you knew there was a you knew you needed a hook and a refrain.
Marc:When did you start to learn that stuff?
Guest:Yeah, I started to figure it out then.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And you start to get more kind of analytical and scientific about it as you keep going with it.
Guest:And as you're exposed to more music and as you write more songs.
Guest:And for me, I started to get a kind of a pattern, a methodology in the studio where
Guest:I pretty much write in the same way every time I go to the studio.
Guest:The initial idea comes in different ways.
Guest:But once I'm fully executing the idea, it's almost always building the music first, building the melody, the rhythm of that vocal melody first, and then scatting.
Guest:the the pre lyric basically uh before you know what you're going to say and then uh and then eventually writing the lyric and i've been writing that way since you know probably age 16 or so and really so you don't like wake up in the middle of the night with a lyric uh sometimes i'll have an idea but i'll just write it down right and then or i'll record it into my phone but i won't finish the song then
Guest:The finishing of it and the full execution of the writing process usually happens in the same way.
Guest:I'm usually in the studio, the same order, basically the music first and the lyric.
Guest:And I've been doing that since, you know, since I can really remember writing as an adult.
Guest:And...
Guest:I usually do it within a few hours.
Guest:So it usually takes about three or four hours to fully write a song.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:That doesn't mean it's always going to be good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's written.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And sometimes if I think it's good, but I need to change some of the lyrics, of course, I'll change them.
Guest:And then some I just I'm like, oh, that didn't work out.
Guest:I'm just going to scrap it.
Guest:And there's lots of songs like that in my life where it was fine, but it wasn't good enough.
Guest:And and I just scrap them.
Marc:So, well, eventually they'll they'll show up somewhere, probably.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:After I die.
Marc:Someone will release the scrapped songs of John Legend.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:But so that it seems like the way you talk about it, like that's the job.
Marc:The song is the job.
Guest:Well, it's part of the job, and it's also the joy for me.
Guest:I get so much joy from finishing a song.
Guest:Not even just finishing the whole arrangement, but just finishing writing the song, composing the song.
Guest:When it's done, it's very exciting.
Guest:Every time it's exciting.
Guest:I'm sure.
Marc:And then you've had so many hits.
Marc:That's got to be the second wave of excitement.
Marc:Here's the song.
Guest:Well, you don't even know.
Guest:You don't even know, though.
Guest:Any of those songs can change your life, you know?
Guest:But in the moment, you're just happy you've finished and it feels good in that moment.
Marc:And it brings you a lot of joy.
Marc:So when was your first break that you really kind of can identify?
Guest:well let's say this the first time i got to be on a major album was lauren hill's album in 1998 so i'm a student at the university of pennsylvania at the time i had started there in 95 i'm in my junior year
Guest:And my weekend job was as a director of music at a church in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Guest:So Scranton, Scranton is up up up the interstate from Philly and is famous for the office now, of course.
Guest:But before that, I guess it was famous because Joe Biden was from there originally.
Guest:But anyway.
Guest:I would go up to Scranton every weekend and play for this church.
Guest:And that helped pay my bills in school, helped me eat during school.
Marc:And also, it was service.
Guest:Weekend job.
Guest:Yeah, it was service.
Guest:And I got to make music and work with a choir.
Guest:And it was fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One of the choir members was from North Jersey and she went to high school with Lauryn Hill.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And she sang and Lauryn Hill looked at her as a big sister.
Guest:And when Lauryn was working on her first solo album after the huge success of the Fugees album, The Score,
Guest:My friend asked me if I wanted to go to the studio and meet Lauren and see what she was working on.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I'm like, of course, I would love to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I go with her to I think it was East Orange or one of the oranges in Jersey.
Guest:And she's in the studio.
Guest:Rohan Marley's there.
Guest:Some other producers are there.
Guest:Musicians are there and they're working on a song called Everything is Everything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And this we didn't know what this song was going to be.
Guest:I don't think they even knew the title at the time.
Guest:But during one of their writing breaks,
Guest:I basically auditioned for Lauryn Hill because my friend was like, Lauryn, you got to hear my friend play and sing.
Guest:So I sat down at this upright piano in the studio and I sing a couple of songs for her.
Guest:And she liked it enough to ask me to play piano on the track she was working on at the time.
Guest:And so my first claim to fame going back to my senior year at Penn was I'm on track 13 of this album that we all love.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill playing piano on Everything is Everything.
Guest:So that was my first big break.
Marc:That's crazy story.
Marc:That's a crazy story.
Guest:And then I auditioned for her band to tour with her.
Guest:So I was ready to drop out of school, go on the road with Lauryn Hill.
Guest:But I got rejected.
Guest:She picked somebody else to be the musical director of the band.
Guest:And so I finished school and graduated.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:You ever think about what would have happened?
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who knows?
Marc:I wonder.
Marc:I wonder.
Marc:Who knows?
Marc:It could have went the other way, John.
Marc:It could have went.
Guest:Who knows what would have happened?
Marc:A lot of people believe that you're living that parallel life.
Marc:That's also happening somewhere.
Guest:Well, who knows?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The parallel universe.
Marc:I don't like to think about that too much.
Marc:I have a hard enough time with this one.
Guest:My brain hurts when I hear that.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:So then like, and then could you use that as a reference?
Marc:Did you use it as a reference?
Marc:Was it?
Guest:Oh, I use the shit out of it.
Guest:I use it all the time.
Guest:I was like, you may have heard me on track 13 on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
Guest:And you got to remember, this is like album of the year.
Guest:Yeah, it's huge.
Guest:She won every Grammy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was just a phenomenon.
Guest:So even having a sprinkling of a touch on that album was useful.
Guest:Gold dust.
Guest:And it...
Guest:It led to other things, but it didn't lead to me getting a record deal as soon as I wanted one.
Guest:So that was 98.
Guest:I graduated college in 99.
Guest:And I'm, you know, at this Ivy League school with all these high achieving kids and they're all doing, you know, interviews for...
Guest:investment banks and consulting firms and i'm like well um i guess i need to get a job too because music ain't paying the bills yet yeah so i apply to work at boston consulting group and mckenzie and all these uh major consulting firms and uh i got hired at boston consulting group this is like
Guest:One of the top, you know, white shoe consulting firms.
Guest:And I get hired to work there.
Guest:I'm like, you know, a junior.
Guest:You know, they bring you in to do like analysis, data crunching.
Marc:Is that what you studied?
Guest:No, I was an English major.
Guest:But they hired liberal arts majors there.
Guest:They like people with kind of a diversity of backgrounds.
Marc:What was your focus as an English major in an Ivy League?
Guest:What was your... African-American literature and culture.
Guest:So you pick the major and then you have a concentration.
Guest:And so within African-American literature and culture, you read, you know, black novelists, but you also study black history and anthropology, if you want.
Marc:Who were your favorite writers of that?
Guest:Oh, I loved Toni Morrison.
Guest:She's my all-time favorite.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Great.
Guest:She and she's also from Ohio, like myself.
Guest:And she's one of the great novelists, I think, of any race.
Guest:No, for sure.
Guest:Culture in history.
Guest:So she's definitely one of my favorites.
Guest:And she I read her a lot when I was in school and wrote about her in some of my papers and.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:So that's my major.
Guest:And I go to Boston for a year.
Guest:So I'm literally working in Boston at Boston Consulting Group.
Guest:They have offices all around the world, but I got hired in the Boston office.
Marc:Boston's a rough town.
Guest:It wasn't the right town for me, for sure.
Guest:So Philly was great.
Guest:So I'm there.
Guest:Philly was like, I'm at Penn.
Guest:The roots are in town.
Guest:I don't know them yet, but I know of them.
Guest:And I see them doing open mics.
Guest:And Jill Scott's there.
Guest:And all these really talented soul artists are there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hip hop artists are coming to town to collaborate with the roots and all these people.
Guest:So you would, you know, see these open mic open mics and Common would show up and and D'Angelo would show up and Erykah Badu would show up.
Guest:So all of these all of these artists are really blossoming during this moment when I happen to be going to college in this city.
Guest:And so I get to just kind of soak it all in.
Guest:I don't know all these guys yet.
Guest:I want to know them.
Guest:I want them to listen to me and check me out.
Guest:But they have their own crew and it's hard to work your way in.
Guest:But I'm seeing all of it and being inspired by all of it.
Guest:And then I take this detour and take this job in Boston.
Guest:And Boston wasn't the right city for me.
Marc:I lived there for years.
Marc:It's almost a segregated city.
Marc:It's a very weird.
Guest:It's got that.
Guest:And it's also not the best music scene.
Marc:It's a rock music scene.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I asked for a transfer to New York.
Guest:So I ended up working in New York at Boston Consulting Group for two more years after my first year in Boston.
Guest:Really stuck with it, huh?
Guest:And when I'm in New York, I start really meeting the people that are going to change my life.
Guest:how do you do that though you're just going out at night or you you know people yeah going out at night i started playing gigs um i had guys that i had written with in philadelphia uh and we put a little uh band together i was the i was the front man and it was under my name but you know they came out and played with me at little uh clubs in new york so if you've heard of
Guest:elbow room or downtime or knitting factory or sob i know all those uptown yeah i was playing at all of them um and uh you know they're right down the street from a lot of the comedy clubs you were probably sure at the same time yeah and um so we're playing all these places and um i have a kind of a built-in fan base of just friends i went to college with basically yeah
Marc:The roaming 20 people, that'll show up wherever you are?
Guest:Well, Penn, everybody goes to New York after Penn.
Guest:So literally, I'm getting like 50, 75, 100 people to show up just for a 30-minute set for me.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Guest:And that's a good way to kick it off because not a lot of new artists moving into New York would have that kind of built-in group of people that would come see them.
Guest:So I was doing that.
Guest:I was selling CDs from my apartment, going to post office and mailing them off myself.
Marc:With the little foam envelopes?
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:A little website that one of my friends from college created for me.
Guest:And my roommate is a guy I went to college with and was roommates with in college.
Guest:And his cousin is Kanye West.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:So Kanye grew up in Chicago.
Guest:is just about to have his big break as a producer, not as a rapper, but as a producer, making beats for Jay-Z and some other Rockefeller artists.
Guest:And he moves to New York.
Guest:He actually moved to Newark, New Jersey, but right across the tunnel.
Guest:So he moves to Newark.
Guest:I'm living in the East Village.
Guest:Where in the East Village?
Guest:7th Street and 2nd Avenue.
Guest:I have two roommates that I went to college with.
Marc:I lived on 2nd between A and B for a couple of years.
Guest:Yeah, so you know where the Orpheum Theater is, where the stomp show plays?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, sure.
Guest:We were right above that.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So we lived there, two roommates, all working in the corporate world, but...
Guest:Devon Harris, who is Kanye's cousin, he by day is working at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a consultant, and at night he's DJing and making beats, and he's connecting me with his cousin.
Guest:And his cousin moves to Newark, starts to blow up as a producer, and we start writing together.
Guest:My demo, which eventually became the basis for Get Lifted, my first album.
Guest:You and Kanye.
Guest:And me and Kanye.
Marc:A young Kanye.
Guest:A young Kanye.
Guest:I signed to his production company.
Guest:Again, he's known more as a producer at this point.
Guest:People are skeptical about him being a rapper.
Guest:And he's starting to blow up and people are interested in, you know, who would he sign?
Guest:Who would he work with?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And so he gets a production deal, calls his company, good music, getting out our dreams.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he signs me as the first artist.
Guest:And
Guest:Through his production company, I got signed to Columbia Records, and that was in May of 2004.
Marc:Columbia is a very historically respectable... Oh, of course.
Guest:Springsteen's there, Bob Dylan, so many major artists, and Tony Bennett.
Guest:It's just like...
Guest:A lot of pedigree there.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And so they signed me through Kanye's production company and Get Lifted came out seven months later.
Guest:It was basically already written and most of it was recorded prior to me getting a record deal.
Marc:And most of that work you did with Kanye?
Guest:He produced like four or five tracks and then a guy in Philly that I had been working with since college named Dave Tozer produced a few more.
Marc:You work with him a lot, Tozer.
Guest:yeah tozer i've written with him over the years we uh we've written together since 97 98 uh-huh devon uh you know the the roommate he produced a couple tracks as well and that was pretty much my brain trust oh and will i am actually from the black eyed peas because my new manager that i got in 2002 he also managed the black eyed peas and uh the first producer he thought to hook me up with was uh
Guest:Will.i.am.
Guest:So he actually worked with me on Ordinary People and another song called She Don't Have to Know on the album.
Guest:And so those were the four producers I collaborated with on my first album.
Marc:And it was huge.
Guest:It was huge.
Guest:I won Best New Artist, got eight Grammy nominations, and it was the start of a really rewarding career.
Marc:Do you find that, like on the album Evolver, I mean, do you find, I mean, it doesn't seem like you radically change, but you do kind of expand.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, we expanded.
Guest:The first single was a song called Green Light, and that was definitely a departure.
Guest:It was very up-tempo, and people hadn't really seen me doing that.
Guest:Andre 3000 was on it, so that made it a lot more of a splashier track.
Guest:Is he a fun guy?
Guest:Oh, he's incredible.
Guest:He's creative, fun, smart.
Guest:He's just he's kind of a recluse now.
Guest:You rarely see him.
Guest:Aren't we all right now?
Guest:Well, no, even before this.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Like we never performed Green Light Live ever.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Not once.
Guest:And when I asked him, you know, if he ever wanted to do the song, like when I came to Atlanta on my tour, I was like, you ever want to come out on stage?
Guest:We'd love to have you.
Guest:uh whenever i get a tv opportunity i reach out and see if you want to do it he was like you know i don't i don't perform on stage i haven't done so in years and i don't know if i ever will huh and so is he agoraphobic or he just doesn't want to go out i don't know like i've never asked him exactly what his reasoning is but he's happy living the way he lives and he doesn't really want to change it so i respect it hey you got to respect somebody who doesn't want to play the big game anymore
Guest:Yeah, and he could make a lot more money if he wanted to, and he's choosing not to.
Marc:Maybe he's okay.
Marc:Maybe he's got enough.
Marc:Yeah, he's fine.
Marc:Good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But yeah, so the hits keep coming, right?
Guest:Yeah, we've had... I mean, the biggest hit was, of course, All of Me, which was from my fourth big studio album, Love in the Future, and I wrote that inspired by my wife.
Guest:When did you meet her?
Guest:She was my fiancé at the time.
Guest:I met her in 2006,
Guest:And we started, we actually met shooting a video for a song for my second album.
Guest:The second album is called Once Again.
Guest:And there was a song on the album that wasn't even a single, but my friend Nabil Elderkin, who's a producer.
Guest:A director, a photographer and a producer.
Guest:He loved the song and he had a video idea for it.
Guest:And at the time he wasn't known as a director.
Guest:He was just taking photos.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And actually, I got to tell the backstory of how I met him.
Guest:I met Nabil because he was squatting KanyeWest.com.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:He was squatting the site.
Guest:You know how back in the day when people didn't have a lot of web presence.
Guest:He bought it?
Guest:You would become famous and you hadn't already bought your website.
Guest:Yeah, and somebody owned it.
Guest:Somebody owned it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And his only...
Guest:stipulation for giving Kanye his website was just let me take pictures of you.
Guest:And so he's this young kid.
Guest:He's probably 19 or 20 at the time.
Guest:And he bargains with Kanye to just hang out with us and take pictures in exchange for giving him his domain name.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so Kanye gets his domain name and the bill hangs out with us and takes lots of photos.
Guest:And Nabil and I become friends.
Guest:And he's also starting to take photos for other people, for brands.
Guest:One of the brands he was taking it for was Billabong, which is, you know, like a surfwear brand.
Guest:And my wife was modeling for Billabong.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And she meets Nabil.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So...
Guest:Nabil wants to do a video of this song Stereo, not a single, he just wants to do it on spec to show people that he can direct as well.
Guest:He's a photographer at this point.
Marc:As is real.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:So he wants to show people he can direct and he chooses to do a song called Stereo on spec for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he starts showing me pictures of this woman that he had just shot and he's like, would you like her to be your love interest in the video?
Guest:And I'm like, yes.
Guest:And it's Chrissy.
Guest:And it's Chrissy.
Guest:And he's like, yeah, I think you're going to like her.
Guest:She's really cool and funny and all these things and beautiful.
Guest:And so we meet, we hit it off and we start dating not long after that.
Guest:And we got pretty serious starting like 2007, 2008.
Guest:And then I proposed in 2011 and we got married in 2013.
Guest:And then All of Me comes out and becomes this massive song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We shot the video.
Guest:in italy yeah and it was shot by nabil elderkin the guy who introduced us um seven years prior and it literally was the anniversary of the day we met seven years later that we're shooting this video and the day after the anniversary of the day we met we got married
Marc:Was that on purpose or you just see it now?
Guest:No.
Guest:It was lucky because we had planned to do the wedding at a completely different place in America.
Guest:And then at some point, we're like, why are we doing this?
Guest:We don't want that many people to come to the wedding anyway, so let's make it a far flight for people.
Guest:And so we decided to change and get married in September.
Guest:And then I do the math.
Guest:At some point, I figured out, oh,
Guest:This is the day we met.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And it was the day before our wedding was seven years since the day we met.
Guest:And we're shooting the video for all of me on the day before our wedding in Italy with Nabil as the director.
Guest:And it was like a magical full circle moment.
Marc:That is beautiful.
Marc:How's Nabil now?
Marc:Good?
Marc:He's good.
Guest:He's going to direct another video for this album, and he's directed feature films at this point.
Guest:He had one, I believe, at Tribeca last year that's probably coming out this year.
Guest:Really talented guy, and he's still a close family friend.
Marc:Who did the camera work for the BET performance he did last night?
Guest:That was Benny Boom.
Guest:He did a fantastic job.
Guest:He's directed lots and lots of videos and TV.
Guest:I think he's done film as well.
Guest:But he's fantastic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you guys, you and your wife are getting along great.
Marc:You got two kids and they're good.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Everyone's good.
Guest:They're good.
Guest:The babies are good.
Marc:Spending a lot of time with everybody now, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like it could go either way because you're spending this much time with somebody and it might expose some problems in your relationship.
Guest:But I think we've been good through it.
Guest:And it actually has shown me how great of a mom she is, too, because you got to be way more creative when you can't send your kid to preschool every day.
Guest:You know, when it's just us always together all the time.
Guest:And she's been so creative, so fun and just fun to be part of this crazy quarantine with.
Marc:And now how's your relationship with Kanye?
Marc:Good?
Guest:It's fine.
Guest:You know, we're not as close as we were, mostly for work reasons.
Guest:We I'm not signed as production company anymore.
Guest:And we haven't worked on an album together since 2013.
Guest:And, you know, I used to tour with them.
Guest:I used to be signed as production company.
Guest:We used to have all these kind of built in reasons for us to be in the same space.
Guest:And now he's in Wyoming.
Guest:Our families are still close.
Guest:So we'll like, you know, go to their Christmas party or Easter party or whatever.
Marc:In Wyoming?
Guest:Or a birthday or something.
Guest:We haven't gone there yet.
Guest:But he's really only been there full time since the quarantine.
Guest:But, you know, in L.A.
Guest:And so we still see each other, but not nearly as much.
Guest:And obviously we've had our public disputes about...
Guest:But I still love him like a brother.
Guest:And I I'm so grateful for everything we've done together.
Marc:And have you seen an evolution of his sort of expansive mental disposition?
Marc:I mean, was he always like that?
Guest:He wasn't.
Guest:He's he's definitely more.
Guest:you know i don't know how to diagnose it he's talked about being bipolar right um he he's talked about some of that before and i don't know that i saw that in him you know at the beginning yeah but um obviously it's something he's up front about and he's dealing with and uh i don't know the ins and outs of all that but it hasn't affected the core of your love for him or each other
Guest:I mean, I think it's I think our love is based on so much history together, so much that we are proud of that we've done together.
Guest:And even when I disagree with him and I shake my head at some of the things he says, I still have that love for him.
Marc:Yeah, that's well, that's a that's a testament to a real friendship.
Guest:yeah and and honestly it's like so much history like like we were on the road together we were making music together when no one believed in either of us and when you have that with somebody it creates a bond that that'll stay yeah and even as your life evolves you're in different places you still have that sure and you won the um the bet award now does that yeah all these awards i mean is it still great to win an award i have to assume it is right
Guest:It is still great.
Guest:I've never won that particular award.
Guest:I've never won video of the year.
Guest:I've never won album of the year, the Grammys, for instance.
Guest:So if I were to win something like that... You've never won album of the year?
Guest:No.
Guest:I've won in my... How is that possible?
Guest:Well, I've won in my category.
Guest:Kanye hasn't either.
Guest:Beyonce hasn't either.
Guest:We've won in our categories.
Guest:Best R&B album or whatever.
Guest:But there's a cross-genre album of the year category.
Guest:And frankly, black artists rarely win that.
Guest:It's been a sore spot for us over the years.
Guest:And can you imagine that we've gone through the
Guest:amazing creative output of beyonce and kanye over the last 15 years and neither of them have won album of the year i feel like it's i feel like it's stunning it's coming though i feel i feel like it's coming i hope so but i mean like if lemonade couldn't do it if my beautiful dark twisted fantasy couldn't do it like all these like yeah yeah really important like
Guest:critically loved, extremely popular albums from people who are making some of the most vital music in their generation.
Guest:Ever.
Guest:They haven't won Best Album.
Marc:Yeah, it feels to me, though, that perception is changing perhaps a bit, John.
Guest:We'll see.
Guest:I hope so.
Guest:But voters are voters, and hopefully the voters will do some reflecting.
Guest:The Academy is the Academy, and I'm part of it, and I'm a trustee now on the board.
Guest:But the voters are who they are.
Guest:You can face some people out if they're not still making music.
Guest:And then you can try to introduce it.
Marc:But it definitely it comes down to understanding and taste and being able to contextualize the music that's being presented in this particular moment.
Marc:And I imagine some of them are maybe a little older.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, it's like it was it's disproportionately older white guys.
Guest:And that's fine if they're still making music, if they're still like in the business and active in the business and they know what's going on.
Guest:But it's not cool if, you know, they're kind of tilting the the the votes in a more conservative direction and they're not really.
Guest:Part of the kind of zeitgeist of who's making music in that moment.
Marc:It would seem you would it would be better to have younger people.
Marc:I mean, I mean, why is it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that and I, you know, I actively try to get younger people to join.
Guest:But, you know, there are rules about how people get phased out of being members of voting members of the Academy.
Guest:And so that's the phasing out of the older set and also phasing in the new set.
Marc:But in terms of your awards, you did the EGOT thing.
Marc:You got all of them, the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar, the Tony.
Marc:And that's rarely done.
Marc:That's very exciting.
Marc:Now, I don't know the story behind the doing Jesus Christ Superstar again.
Marc:Was that you?
Guest:It was presented to us by NBC.
Guest:You know, some of the networks have been doing these live musical events and some of them have gone well, some of them not so well.
Guest:But NBC reached out to us and said they were interested in doing a new version of Jesus Christ Superstar and would I play Jesus Christ?
Guest:And I'm like...
Guest:i had never thought this would be part of my future but this sounds kind of cool and i'm like why would i turn this down right yeah it's like a really cool opportunity it's a big challenge um which you know i think we should do things that are risky and and and a big challenge for us every once in a while um and they presented it to me they allowed us to produce with them and help uh
Guest:finish with the casting and make sure we were happy with the musical team.
Guest:And so I was like, you know what, let's go for it.
Guest:And so we rehearsed for months.
Guest:We we feel really good about it.
Guest:We but you never know how it's going to be received.
Guest:We perform it live on national television and it was a huge hit.
Guest:The ratings were amazing.
Guest:The reviews were amazing.
Guest:The fans loved it.
Guest:And then people started talking about Emmy buzz and, um,
Guest:I had already gotten the Grammy, the Oscar and the Tony part of the EGOT.
Guest:And so this was the last thing I needed.
Guest:And I was nominated as an actor, which I did not expect.
Guest:But also we were nominated as producers of the best live special.
Guest:And we won that one.
Guest:I did not win the actor award.
Guest:And.
Guest:Here we are, I'm an EGOT, and it's all because I decided to be a part of this Jesus Christ Superstar production.
Marc:Did you like the music before you did it, and did you know the show?
Guest:I knew the show.
Guest:I had sung some of the songs in high school show choir.
Guest:I didn't know all the songs, but I knew a couple of them.
Guest:And then I knew enough about the show.
Guest:And then when they offered it to me, I just listened to the whole cast album again.
Guest:It's kind of great, right?
Guest:It's really good.
Guest:It was early in the idea of doing musicals that were basically rock musicals.
Guest:It was one of the early pioneers of that.
Guest:And it holds up.
Guest:We got to produce it with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
Guest:They were literally at rehearsals.
Guest:And they won their EGOT that same day with the same award because they had both won all three aside from the Emmy before that.
Guest:And so there were 12 EGOTs before that day.
Guest:And then after that day, there were 15 and I was one of them.
Marc:big night for the egots yes i i actually uh lin-manuel miranda um you know i he was a fan he's a fan of my show and i went to see hamilton it was funny because after hamilton i went backstage i said you know it's kind of like jesus christ superstar he's like it's exactly like jesus christ he's like he said structurally we we use jesus christ superstar
Guest:That's wild.
Guest:I never knew that.
Guest:Now, if I went back to see it after having done the show.
Marc:Well, like how Judas starts, you know, Jesus Christ Superstar, Aaron Burr comes out and he's the narrator.
Marc:Like it's in the sort of King Herod, King George, the kind of goof.
Marc:It's all there.
Guest:I need to go back now having done Jesus Christ Superstar and being so intimate with it.
Guest:Now I have to go back and watch Hamilton and I'll probably notice all that stuff too now.
Marc:Are you guys friends?
Marc:It seems like you should be friends.
Guest:I love Lin-Manuel.
Guest:We're not close, but we see each other probably like a few times a year.
Guest:And it's always just a lot of love and good energy.
Guest:And he asked me to, one of the things that's interesting, I read the casting notes for the George Washington character.
Guest:And he said he wanted him to be a mix of John Legend and Common, I believe, in the casting notes when he was originally casting Hamilton.
Guest:And then he asked me to...
Guest:do a remix of History Has Its Eyes On You for this remix album he did for Hamilton.
Guest:And that was really cool.
Guest:That was one of the only times we've actually worked together on something.
Guest:And then other than that, we just have a lot of respect for each other, see each other at different events and give big hugs and all that good stuff.
Marc:That's nice.
Marc:I did Finding Your Roots as well as you.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:What'd you learn?
Marc:Did you learn anything new?
Guest:Oh, it was so cool.
Guest:I learned, there was this whole story
Guest:Any African-American, obviously slavery is going to have a part in our history.
Guest:I learned about one of my relatives or a family of relatives.
Guest:They had been freed from, I believe, West Virginia at the time or might have been Kentucky, but one of the states that borders Ohio.
Guest:Uh, they had been freed, um, upon the death of their, uh, former, uh, slave holder, like how George Washington did it.
Guest:You know, they, they put it in their will after I die, you know, I'm going to grant freedom to all the, the former, uh, formerly enslaved people that.
Marc:Isn't that wild that they, they, they knew enough then they knew it was wrong.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're like, after I, after I can no longer get any benefit from them, I'm going to free.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So anyway, that's what they did.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:this happened to my family and they migrated to ohio because of it they become free before the civil war it might have been like right at the we were on the cusp of the civil war uh-huh the family of the slave owner gets mad and they try to come back and get it get my family members and basically kidnap them back to the south yeah and
Guest:Ohio literally fought in court.
Guest:to make sure that my family members were able to come back to Ohio and be free.
Guest:And it was like a real court battle.
Guest:I knew nothing about it.
Guest:Henry Louis Gates was able to find that out by doing research.
Guest:And that was a cool story.
Marc:You do a lot of work around criminal justice reform.
Marc:How did that become the focus of your particular philanthropy?
Guest:Well, part of it just was from personal experience, knowing what my mom went through when she had a drug addiction issue, knowing that people going through those issues need help.
Guest:They don't need to be locked up.
Guest:They need someone who can help them deal with the mental health issues that got them there in the first place.
Guest:And help them figure out a way to kick their habit.
Guest:It's a more of a medical issue than it is a criminal issue.
Guest:And seeing that, that definitely informed some of my personal empathy for so many other families that are dealing with it.
Guest:But also, I did a lot of reading.
Guest:I read about what was going on.
Guest:I got outraged by reading it.
Guest:I read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and other books that really just got me mad about the situation.
Guest:I didn't know, because you know, like growing up in your neighborhood, you know about one of the drug dealers that got locked up.
Guest:You know about this guy that got in trouble.
Guest:You know about family members that get in trouble.
Guest:And you always kind of just say, oh, they messed up, so they got in trouble.
Guest:And then
Guest:That's how this works.
Guest:But then when you read about the system, you read about the systems and how they've been applied, particularly in the black community, you realize how much injustice has gone into it.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:If you're reading about it and you have any empathy and any sense of morality, it gets you upset.
Guest:And so I got upset and decided I wanted to do something about it.
Guest:So we started Free America.
Guest:We started going around the country talking to all the stakeholders in the criminal justice system.
Guest:We called it a listening and learning tour.
Guest:We went around and listened and learned.
Guest:We talked to lots of organizers and activists.
Guest:We still talk to them all the time.
Guest:And we decided, you know, these are some of the things we believe in.
Guest:We want to end money bail.
Guest:We want to end life without parole for juveniles.
Guest:We want to...
Guest:basically decarcerate all juveniles whenever possible.
Guest:We want to legalize drugs as much as possible and also treat drugs as a medical issue, decriminalize them.
Guest:And those are some of the things we believe and we've been fighting for in states and localities all around the country.
Guest:We've also
Guest:gotten involved in district attorney races because the more we talk to folks, we realize how much district attorneys have an impact on the entire system.
Guest:And they do plea deals for almost all the cases that come through their system.
Guest:And so them using their discretion prosecutorily is such a huge deal.
Guest:And they have the power within their office to really
Guest:reduce the incarceration rate just by making different policy decisions about how they go after certain crimes and what they pursue when they go after certain crimes.
Guest:So we decided to start getting involved in district attorney elections.
Guest:So we helped elect a progressive DA in Philadelphia, Chicago,
Guest:I believe Orlando or Jacksonville, one of those, Houston, all over the country.
Guest:And we're working to get a more progressive DA here in Los Angeles as well this fall.
Guest:And that's part of the reform we want to see.
Guest:And we're just out there trying to make it happen.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:That's doing the big work.
Guest:And the same people that have been working on that are some of the same people that are talking about reimagining public safety when it comes to policing and other aspects of the justice system.
Guest:And so when you hear us talking about defunding the police,
Guest:A lot of that conversation is around taking the money, you know, six billion dollar budget in Los Angeles, taking some of that money or a large portion of that money and saying, let's invest in things that actually make it less likely for people to commit crime.
Guest:in the first place.
Guest:Let's invest in their health.
Guest:Let's invest in making sure they have a place to live and food on the table.
Guest:Let's invest in pre-K so that young people are given a good start.
Guest:You see the results throughout their schooling and throughout their lives when you're able to give them quality preschool.
Guest:So we make choices as a society about how we spend our tax dollars.
Guest:That's what politics is, essentially.
Guest:It's deciding how much to tax us and then
Guest:Based on that pool of money, what do we spend it on?
Guest:And right now we think we spend way too much on policing.
Guest:We spend way too much on jails and prisons as well.
Guest:And we're saying, with this defund movement, saying move some of those funds, a large portion of those funds, to things that would prevent the crime that you're worried about in the first place.
Marc:And people have a shot to function in society.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Make society healthier, safer, more loving, and we'll have less crime anyway, and we won't need as many police.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Thanks for talking to me, John.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:And I love the new record.
Guest:Thank you, Mark.
Guest:I love the show.
Guest:Great to be on it finally, and enjoy.
Marc:Okay, take care.
Guest:Take care.
Marc:john legend what a mensch what a mensch as we say in the yiddish great guy great artist and the album's really it's really good and you can get that album bigger love wherever you get music and now i will play some music kind of unproduced music improvisational music
Marc:Just a little kind of John Lee Hooker jump thing.
Marc:Perhaps with a little taste of diddly.
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Marc:Boomer lives.