John Roger Stephens Quotes
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In my neighborhood in Springfield, Ohio, there were a lot of young kids. We all played tackle football after school, but I knew very early on that I was not an athlete.
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I'm honestly not a great gift giver. I could give better - my girlfriends have always complained about that.
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John Legend is a nickname that some friends started calling me, and it kind of grew into my stage name.
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In terms of the technology I use the most, it's probably a tie between my Blackberry and my MacBook Pro laptop. That's how I communicate with the rest of the world and how I handle all the business I have to handle.
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I listen to all those kinds of music, from classic soul to hip-hop to Brazilian music to, you know, jazz to indie to alternative. So whatever. I listen to all if it. Classic rock and classic pop, all of that.
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Soul is about authenticity. Soul is about finding the things in your life that are real and pure.
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Well, what's interesting, I try not to think about the radio when I'm writing a song. I want people to love the song, and that means it might not be exactly thinking about the radio, but it's thinking about your audience and saying, 'I want people to like this song after it's done.'
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There's nothing that can shock me anymore, but at this point, Trump's made it very clear how his temperament is, how his personality is, what his level of intellectual depth is when it comes to policy, and he's made it abundantly clear that he's utterly unqualified to be president - no matter what your political views are.
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Experience is a great teacher.
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I always felt that rap didn't cause crime; it just reflected it.
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I always figured I would live long enough to see a black president. The movies predicted it. Usually, Morgan Freeman.
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Shoes are important, of course. I love my Lanvin sneakers - they go with a lot of things. And then I think a nice bag is great, so you carry your computer or whatever else in style. I've been carrying a Tom Ford backpack lately.
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When I write, I don't really focus on duets or anything like that or whether I'm going to feature this or that rapper. I just focus on just making a great song and figure out the rest later.
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We have this film that we hope to finance, it's called 'Southern Rights.' It's a documentary about segregated proms that are still happening in the South of America. So there's a black prom and a white prom, so we hope to finance a film soon about that.
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Trump's been a public personality forever, and that's fine if you want him to be a reality-TV host, but if you want him to be president, there's a different standard.
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I think the thing about love is that even though the things around us change, we as human beings, a lot of the ways we interact, and the ways we love each other is timeless. It requires trust, honesty, commitment, romance, and physical chemistry.
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I've never put out a song that I wasn't completely proud of and that I didn't love. In that sense, I've never felt like I sold out in any way.
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When we meet people who are astronauts or deal in astronomy, it's always really fascinating.
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I work with a bunch of producers on every album, but the difference for 'Evolver' was that I couldn't get any time with Kanye. I forget what he was doing at the time, but he was all over the place. We were never at the same city at the same time.
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Even with G.O.O.D. Music, we have artists that have done very well, and we've had artists that haven't. Being attached to Kanye is only going to get you so far. You've still got to have the records and the talent and the artistry on your own to carry it.
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The most I ever spent on technology is building a studio - I built one at home in Los Angeles. I can't tell you how much exactly, but the whole process is very expensive.
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My dad liked a lot of Motown, but I didn't listen to it until my teenage years.
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The prison-industrial complex, poverty, and the school system has more effect on a young black male in America than Jay-Z does, by far. And that's not a diss to Jay-Z. The crime rate in the black community was high before hip hop. Rapping about it is just a reflection of the life a lot of people are living.
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Some artists I know, they would rather not see the audience or envision them. But for me, I'd rather see them. I feel like part of the reason I perform is to feel that connection. It's the reason I love it so much.