John Roger Stephens Quotes
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If you look at what happened with Underground Railroad, there is so much action. There is so much intrigue; there is so much of historical importance.
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I signed with Kanye back in 2003, and at that time, 'The College Dropout' hadn't even come out, so he was still relatively unknown compared to where he is now. He wasn't a household name; people were still calling him 'Kane.'
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Hip-hop is one of the most free art forms there is. There's so many sounds you can use, so many things you can bring in. You never know, man. I bet years ago people would've never said they would hear me with Rick Ross, and we did four classic songs together.
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I'm craving more soul, I'm craving more truth, I'm craving more socially - just people that are aware of what's going on in the world.
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In the 1970s, for all the Stevie Wonders, I'm sure there were five artists that were making forgettable music.
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I was around a lot of gospel as a kid.
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Hip hop is usually a bunch of guys talking to a bunch of guys, in my experience. It's homosocial, not homosexual, in that it's almost always all one gender in a room where it's being created. That locker-room environment has an impact on the language. I think the music suffers 'cause it allows an almost cartoonish level of misogyny.
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John legend is a nickname that somebody started calling me a while ago and part of it is 'cos I sound like an old man when I sing.
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I think writers are prone to hyperbole sometimes.
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Sometimes there's that perfect moment when the crowd, the music, the energy of the room come together in a way that brings me to tears.
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Artists in general never stay in the same place; we keep growing. It's still you: you still have that core that you always had, but you work with new people and hear new things.
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I was homeschooled for several years.
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Well, I like songs that have like a little bit of quirkiness to them.
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Instead of investing our resources in locking people up, let's invest more of those resources in our fellow citizens so they don't end up in the system to begin with. And if they do, they can get back on their feet.
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I know how it feels to be a singer who wants to get discovered.
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I think they need to get a more reliable way of watching television on the laptop. Because I travel so much, if I want to watch my favorite sports team it might not be showing in that place, so I want a reliable way to watch whatever I want to watch on my laptop.
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At work, you want to stand out but not in extra-funky ways. At the core, it's about dressing for girls - who are most of my fans - and you want to dress up for them. You just want to feel like you're on top of your game.
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Obviously, Kanye and I are very different in the way we express ourselves publicly. He's so passionate... about art, about culture, about creativity. And he's really good at it. And that honesty manifests itself in ways that are not politically correct, not socially acceptable sometimes.
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In America we have big issues with education - in impoverished communities especially. I work with Teach For All, and so we're encouraging more people to get into teaching.
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I studied African American studies, and I read these slave narratives and the escape narratives of people that were able to escape slavery and always found those stories intriguing and powerful and inspiring.
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There are autobiographical elements to the albums, and when I write, I always reference my own life as well as other things, so I'm just like any novelist or any fiction writer who tells stories.
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Anybody under the age of forty knows hip-hop, gospel and R&B pretty well, and it's all a part of what we consider to be 'black music.' There is a natural synergy between the three.
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Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.
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The main focus for me is not trying to find duet partners. It's about just making great songs. I want most of my album to be in my voice because it's my point of view.