Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / John Legend

Transcript

John Legend · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:08
Speaker 1: Pushkin. John Legends one of those people who can brighten
0:15
Speaker 1: a day, so we're lucky during these times to be
0:18
Speaker 1: getting some new music. Rick wanted to talk to an
0:21
Speaker 1: uplifting artist for the podcast and John was one of
0:23
Speaker 1: the first people that came to mind, and the timing
0:26
Speaker 1: was perfect because John just released Actions, a song off
0:30
Speaker 1: his new album that's due later this year. Rick and
0:33
Speaker 1: John are both sheltered in place at the moment while
0:35
Speaker 1: we arrived this virus out. You probably saw John's living
0:37
Speaker 1: room concert with his wife, Chrissy Tigue in this past week,
0:40
Speaker 1: so we connected with John via zoom. So the first
0:42
Speaker 1: time we've really done a remote recording like this for
0:44
Speaker 1: the podcast, but it was a nice trial run since
0:46
Speaker 1: we'll likely be doing a lot more of this in
0:48
Speaker 1: the future, and since it's our first go at it.
0:50
Speaker 1: You'll probably hear some kids crying in the background, and
0:52
Speaker 1: this episode's definitely a lot shorter than usual, But when
0:55
Speaker 1: John's album comes out later this year, we'll definitely try
0:57
Speaker 1: to get him back on In the meantime, joyed this
1:00
Speaker 1: conversation between Rick and John Legend. This is broken record
1:07
Speaker 1: liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond, here's
1:15
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin and John Legend. What's happening, Rick, How are
1:19
Speaker 1: you feeling. I'm feeling great. How are you good? It's
1:22
Speaker 1: nice to see you. My pleasure. Are you in Malibu?
1:25
Speaker 1: Were probably really close to each other. I'm in Hawaii? Actually,
1:28
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Okay, so we're very far from each other. Yes,
1:33
Speaker 1: it's a interesting We've been doing these podcasts now for
1:36
Speaker 1: I don't know about a year and a half, and
1:40
Speaker 1: I've never done one this way. They've always been in person. Okay, well,
1:45
Speaker 1: this is going to be a new new experience for
1:47
Speaker 1: both of us into the wave of the present. Absolutely
1:51
Speaker 1: not the future. So do you remember your first memories
1:56
Speaker 1: of music as a kid. Yeah, my first memory of
2:00
Speaker 1: music as a kid. We're in church. I grew up
2:04
Speaker 1: in the Pentecostal church in Springfield, Ohio. My grandfather was
2:08
Speaker 1: the pastor of our church. My grandmother was the church organist,
2:13
Speaker 1: and my mother directed the choir, and my dad sang
2:16
Speaker 1: in the choir and played the drums, and so I
2:21
Speaker 1: would go to a choir rehearsal with my parents and
2:25
Speaker 1: hang out with them and with my grandmother, and I
2:29
Speaker 1: would be at church every Sunday and sometimes during the week,
2:33
Speaker 1: and we were surrounded by gospel music all the time.
2:39
Speaker 1: My parents played it on their record player at home
2:43
Speaker 1: and eventually their cassette player, and you know, we were
2:50
Speaker 1: immersed in it, and that was the primary source of
2:54
Speaker 1: music for us. Would you say the church came first
2:58
Speaker 1: and the music followed, or is it primarily a musical church.
3:04
Speaker 1: I would say they were so integrated that you couldn't
3:08
Speaker 1: separate one from the other when you went to our churches,
3:13
Speaker 1: any of the Pentecostal churches that I attended, or that
3:16
Speaker 1: I or the one I grew up in. Music was
3:20
Speaker 1: so integral to the service that you couldn't imagine the
3:25
Speaker 1: service without music. When's the first time you remember playing
3:30
Speaker 1: in front of people. I think probably the first time
3:34
Speaker 1: I sang in front of anyone who was probably like
3:37
Speaker 1: a Christmas program at school. They would try out the
3:40
Speaker 1: little kids to say their little pieces and sing a
3:43
Speaker 1: little song. And I was probably five, maybe four or five,
3:50
Speaker 1: probably not too far from the age my daughter is now.
3:53
Speaker 1: She's almost four, but I was probably a little bit
3:57
Speaker 1: older than that, but not much older. And you know,
4:01
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're doing at that time, but
4:03
Speaker 1: it's part of how you celebrate Christmas as part of
4:07
Speaker 1: how you interact with each other at church. And then
4:10
Speaker 1: I remember one of the first real productions I was
4:14
Speaker 1: in was a Christmas play at my elementary school. I um,
4:20
Speaker 1: for part of my elementary school years attended a Christian
4:23
Speaker 1: school called Springfield Christian School, and some of the time
4:27
Speaker 1: I was homeschooled as well, but for the time that
4:30
Speaker 1: I was there, I was a participant in some of
4:34
Speaker 1: the Christmas musicals and other, you know, little productions at
4:38
Speaker 1: the elementary school would do. And then was there a
4:43
Speaker 1: was there a moment in time where you decided to
4:46
Speaker 1: make it a profession or did it happen organically? Well,
4:50
Speaker 1: it started happening early, so um, you know, I would
4:53
Speaker 1: watch Star Search, and I would watch the Grammys, and
4:57
Speaker 1: I would watch Solid Goal, Old and Soul Trained, and
5:01
Speaker 1: I would see artists who were seemingly enjoying themselves, doing
5:11
Speaker 1: what they love to do and performing in front of
5:14
Speaker 1: large audiences. And I wanted to be one of those artists.
5:18
Speaker 1: I loved singing at church, but I wanted to be
5:20
Speaker 1: one of the artists I saw on television. I would
5:23
Speaker 1: see Stevie Wandering, Michael Jackson, Luther, you know, certain artists
5:27
Speaker 1: caught my attention. Aretha Franklin caught my attention and made
5:32
Speaker 1: me want to be in the stages, on the stages
5:35
Speaker 1: where they were performing, and so I dreamt of being here.
5:41
Speaker 1: Very early in my life. I didn't know what that meant.
5:45
Speaker 1: You know, to me, that meant winning Star search. Funny
5:50
Speaker 1: that I'm on the Voice now, but but you know,
5:54
Speaker 1: to me at the time, it meant winning a television
5:56
Speaker 1: talent show and getting discovered that way. So after church,
6:00
Speaker 1: the next your next connection to music was more through television.
6:05
Speaker 1: You would say, yeah, television, the radio, um, But you
6:10
Speaker 1: know when I when I would see those artists on television,
6:13
Speaker 1: it would kind of put kind of meat and bones
6:17
Speaker 1: on this idea of what it meant to be a
6:21
Speaker 1: professional artist. It would, you know, it gave me a
6:26
Speaker 1: visual representation of what that meant, and not just singing
6:29
Speaker 1: it for free at church or or singing it locally
6:33
Speaker 1: at school, but doing it for a living and doing
6:36
Speaker 1: it on big stages. Television was what kind of introduced
6:40
Speaker 1: me to what that meant. Do you do you remember
6:43
Speaker 1: when or if when you notice that the the difference
6:51
Speaker 1: between the music that was particular to the church and
6:58
Speaker 1: non church music. Oh yeah. My parents made it clear
7:02
Speaker 1: that secular music actually wasn't really welcomed in our home.
7:06
Speaker 1: So we didn't have like almost any secular recordings in
7:11
Speaker 1: our home at the time, even though we'd see some
7:13
Speaker 1: things on television we when we were young. My parents
7:19
Speaker 1: were very strict about those kinds of things, so we
7:21
Speaker 1: didn't have any secular music recordings at home. When I
7:25
Speaker 1: got a little older, things got a little more relaxed
7:27
Speaker 1: and my parents went through we're going through a divorce,
7:31
Speaker 1: and so they got a little more relaxed too, and
7:34
Speaker 1: so a lot of the kind of strict, really fundamentalist
7:39
Speaker 1: traditions that they were cleaving too for a long time,
7:43
Speaker 1: they kind of relaxed them a bit by the time
7:46
Speaker 1: we were ten, eleven, twelve years old, and and then
7:50
Speaker 1: he started to realize, Oh, my dad loved Motown, he
7:52
Speaker 1: loved the Ojas, he loved my mom loved Luther Vandrows.
7:57
Speaker 1: These are artists that they loved, but they didn't really
8:00
Speaker 1: like let on that they loved it because it was
8:04
Speaker 1: in our church tradition kind of frowned upon to listen
8:09
Speaker 1: to secular music. It's piano, your first instrument, my first
8:13
Speaker 1: and only I faked playing guitar on La La land.
8:17
Speaker 1: I learned enough to fake it, and uh, that was
8:20
Speaker 1: other than that. Pianos all I have. And when did
8:23
Speaker 1: your relationship with piano begin? Which started very young. We
8:27
Speaker 1: had a piano in my house, and like I said,
8:30
Speaker 1: my grandmother was a church organist, and so she would
8:33
Speaker 1: show me things on both the organ and piano, mostly piano.
8:38
Speaker 1: She had a piano and organ at her house too,
8:41
Speaker 1: and you know, I was there was not many homes
8:45
Speaker 1: that I would go to that didn't have a piano
8:49
Speaker 1: in my life. So my neighbor next door had a piano.
8:53
Speaker 1: My grandmother, my grandmother's on both sides had pianos, and
8:59
Speaker 1: we had a piano. It was a beat up, upright piano.
9:02
Speaker 1: Do you remember your first experiments with songwriting? Well, I
9:08
Speaker 1: started taking piano lessons formally at a music store when
9:12
Speaker 1: I was about four or five years old, and I
9:17
Speaker 1: learned like classical and hymns and things like that, and
9:22
Speaker 1: then I think I probably started writing around eight or
9:29
Speaker 1: nine years old. I would write things that I could
9:31
Speaker 1: sing at church. I would By the time I was
9:34
Speaker 1: ten or eleven, I was, you know, into girls more.
9:39
Speaker 1: By that point I started writing songs that I could
9:43
Speaker 1: sing to girls that I liked. And so between singing
9:48
Speaker 1: to Jesus and singing to girls that those are my
9:51
Speaker 1: prompts for writing. It was always from a place of passion. Exactly.
10:00
Speaker 1: Do you remember the first music that really spoke to you, um,
10:04
Speaker 1: outside of church, music that we you feel like um
10:10
Speaker 1: was foundational for you, that you would say was your
10:12
Speaker 1: music I loved. Well, there was music that my parents
10:17
Speaker 1: playing that I loved, um um so um. At a
10:22
Speaker 1: certain point, they once they kind of relaxed, uh, the
10:26
Speaker 1: restrictions on sycling music. You know, my mom would play.
10:31
Speaker 1: She would play like kind of modern R and B,
10:33
Speaker 1: like Whitney and Luther and Anita Baker, and my dad
10:38
Speaker 1: was more into, like I said, motown and the OJ's
10:41
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And so my upbringing as a
10:45
Speaker 1: younger child was a combination of gospel music and current
10:50
Speaker 1: R and B and then classic you know, soul. And
10:54
Speaker 1: then once I started developing a consciousness in my own
10:59
Speaker 1: and and actively buying my own records, I was really
11:04
Speaker 1: into New Jack Swing. So, you know, I was in
11:09
Speaker 1: middle school around the time like Bell biv de Vaux
11:13
Speaker 1: was out, I was in high school when Boys to
11:15
Speaker 1: Men was big, and Joe to See and R. Kelly
11:18
Speaker 1: and a lot of those artists that were kind of
11:21
Speaker 1: fusing hip hop and R and B in what were
11:25
Speaker 1: at the time interesting new ways. Mary j came out
11:30
Speaker 1: when I was in high school, and I loved some
11:33
Speaker 1: of the motown stuff like Stevie and Marvin. But the
11:37
Speaker 1: stuff that we talked about at school, that me and
11:40
Speaker 1: my friends were into and excited about in high school
11:43
Speaker 1: was the new stuff that was out, and a lot
11:46
Speaker 1: of that for us was that new Jack swing sound.
11:49
Speaker 1: What was going on in hip hop at that time
11:52
Speaker 1: in hip hop, I wasn't that into hip hop until
11:55
Speaker 1: I went to college. I didn't really get into hip
11:58
Speaker 1: hop in the early nineties. I started to get into
12:01
Speaker 1: it much more in the mid to late nineties. But
12:06
Speaker 1: you know, I think Biggie came out in like the
12:09
Speaker 1: early nineties, Snoop came out, you know, a lot of
12:14
Speaker 1: the like the NWA type artists, Public Enemy. These are
12:19
Speaker 1: things my friends will listening to. But I wasn't that
12:21
Speaker 1: into hip hop until I got a little bit older.
12:23
Speaker 1: Where do you go to school. I went to college
12:27
Speaker 1: at UPenn in Philadelphia, and so I get to Philly,
12:31
Speaker 1: and this was a formative time in my life too.
12:34
Speaker 1: I get to Philly right when the Roots are really
12:38
Speaker 1: kind of running the scene there musically, but they're also
12:42
Speaker 1: working with you know, artists like DeAngelo, common Erica Bado,
12:47
Speaker 1: all these arts are not from Philly, but they would
12:49
Speaker 1: come to Philly to work with the Roots, and James
12:53
Speaker 1: Poyser and these other cats that were producing and recording there.
12:58
Speaker 1: Jill Scott was coming from I'm Philly, Jaguar, Balal music,
13:02
Speaker 1: Soul Child. All this stuff was happening while I was
13:05
Speaker 1: in college. And so in college, I was playing at
13:10
Speaker 1: a church UM every Sunday to help pay my bills,
13:13
Speaker 1: and then uh, during the week, you know, I was
13:18
Speaker 1: singing in an a cappella group UM on campus. But
13:21
Speaker 1: I was also going to different open mics and things
13:24
Speaker 1: like that. They had a thing called Black Lily UM.
13:27
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember that, but this was
13:30
Speaker 1: like an open mic that the that the Roots and
13:34
Speaker 1: the jazzy fat Nasties would host UM and you'd see
13:37
Speaker 1: Jill Scott there, you see Balal, there, you see Jaguar, there,
13:40
Speaker 1: you see all these different artists. They started UM doing
13:43
Speaker 1: it at Wilhelmina's um and then they moved it to
13:46
Speaker 1: the five spot and you would see all of this
13:50
Speaker 1: music being made um and it was amazing and it
13:54
Speaker 1: was exciting to be a witness to it. I didn't
13:57
Speaker 1: have any Philly roots at the time. I was just
13:59
Speaker 1: going to school there, so I wasn't that connected to
14:02
Speaker 1: the local artists scene at that time. But I just
14:05
Speaker 1: started to go to these events and observe and be
14:08
Speaker 1: inspired by what they did. And then I think between
14:12
Speaker 1: that and meeting Lauren Hill in ninety eight through one
14:19
Speaker 1: of the singers that was singing in the choir at
14:21
Speaker 1: the church that I was playing for, all of those
14:25
Speaker 1: things kind of served as inspirations for me to really
14:29
Speaker 1: pursue being a solo artist and writing my own music
14:32
Speaker 1: and really making an earnest effort to be seen and
14:37
Speaker 1: heard by record labels, management and then eventually the world.
14:43
Speaker 1: All that started to happen while I was in college,
14:45
Speaker 1: while I was in Philly, while I was seeing all
14:47
Speaker 1: these other incredible artists doing their thing, it made me
14:52
Speaker 1: want to do it. And so at that time would
14:55
Speaker 1: you have been when you started pursuing it in that way?
14:58
Speaker 1: Did you make demo or did you go out and play? Yeah,
15:02
Speaker 1: So I started making demos when I was I graduated
15:07
Speaker 1: high school young. I was homeschooled some of my early years,
15:11
Speaker 1: and so I graduated high school on a sixteen and
15:15
Speaker 1: so I got to Penn when I was sixteen years old.
15:18
Speaker 1: I would lie by my age because I just didn't
15:22
Speaker 1: want to be the weirdo who was two years younger
15:23
Speaker 1: than everybody else. So I would lie and say my
15:26
Speaker 1: seventeen made a little younger, but you know it was
15:29
Speaker 1: it wasn't too big of a stretch anyway. I get there,
15:32
Speaker 1: I'm sixteen, and I'm figuring myself out what I want
15:35
Speaker 1: to do. I'm also, you know, going to class, doing
15:38
Speaker 1: a work study job, all these things. But people started
15:40
Speaker 1: to hear me sing our auditioned for this acapella group,
15:42
Speaker 1: and people loved my voice there, and I started to
15:45
Speaker 1: get a little bit of a reputation around campus as
15:48
Speaker 1: one of the better singers on campus. And so guys
15:51
Speaker 1: that were musicians or songwriters or producers would start to
15:57
Speaker 1: reach out to me and say, hey, you want to
15:58
Speaker 1: collaborate on some stuff together. I want to help you
16:01
Speaker 1: make a demo, I want to help you create some
16:03
Speaker 1: new songs. So one of the guys was a guy
16:07
Speaker 1: named Dave Tozer who was not a student at Penn,
16:10
Speaker 1: but he was living in Philadelphia and was friends with
16:12
Speaker 1: some of my friends at school, and so we met. Then.
16:16
Speaker 1: He plays a guitar, bass, producers and write songs, and
16:20
Speaker 1: we've been writing songs together since then. Were working on
16:24
Speaker 1: a project now and we've been writing together since probably
16:28
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven nineteen ninety eight. There was another
16:32
Speaker 1: guy who was graduated from Penn, but he happened to
16:37
Speaker 1: be in the same acapella group that I was in,
16:38
Speaker 1: and he was producing and arranging for pop artists at
16:43
Speaker 1: the time. He was like arranging for Lisa Loebe and
16:46
Speaker 1: other artists that were popular at that time in the
16:49
Speaker 1: mid to late nineties, and he had seen me at
16:52
Speaker 1: one of our shows and was like, Oh, I really
16:54
Speaker 1: would love to work with you and write and produce
16:56
Speaker 1: with you. Then there was another guy you might might know.
16:59
Speaker 1: His name is Ted. He works with Snoop UM and
17:02
Speaker 1: he's from out He's from la and Uh. He manages
17:07
Speaker 1: Snoop now as part of Snoop's business team. But at
17:11
Speaker 1: the time he was just a student at Pen UH
17:13
Speaker 1: and he was rapping and producing as well. And UM,
17:18
Speaker 1: so all these different guys UM that I met at
17:22
Speaker 1: school that we're working on music and producing and writing
17:25
Speaker 1: and and we're like, hey, let's collaborate on some stuff.
17:28
Speaker 1: And so I started to put together a demo during
17:31
Speaker 1: that time, UM and UM. The first demo I created
17:36
Speaker 1: was with with Dan Coleman, and then the second one
17:39
Speaker 1: I created was with Dave tozer Um. But I was
17:42
Speaker 1: also collaborating with other producers and one of the producers
17:46
Speaker 1: I met was Veda Nobles who was working with Lauren
17:50
Speaker 1: Hill at the time UM and he worked on the
17:54
Speaker 1: Miss Education of Lauren Hill. I played piano on Everything
17:57
Speaker 1: Is Everything UH when I met Lauren Hill through one
18:01
Speaker 1: of my friends that was at the church that I
18:03
Speaker 1: was directing music at, and Lauren the day I met
18:08
Speaker 1: her asked me to play on the song that they
18:10
Speaker 1: were working on at that time, which was Everything Is Everything.
18:13
Speaker 1: Also auditioned for her band right after that to see
18:18
Speaker 1: if I could go on tour with her after the
18:20
Speaker 1: album came out. I didn't make the band, so I
18:22
Speaker 1: didn't drop out of school, but I would have, but
18:27
Speaker 1: then after that I graduate school. I have a couple
18:31
Speaker 1: different demos that I've made, and I keep working on
18:34
Speaker 1: new music, trying to get heard by different people, record labels, managers, etc.
18:41
Speaker 1: And I take a career detour and become a management consultant.
18:48
Speaker 1: It's kind of like almost peer peer pressure, because all
18:51
Speaker 1: my other friends were like applying to banks and consulting
18:55
Speaker 1: firms and accounting firms. And and one of my friends
18:59
Speaker 1: who was a year ahead of me at Penn, she
19:02
Speaker 1: had graduated and she was working at this place called
19:05
Speaker 1: Boston Consulting Group. And I was like, what do you
19:08
Speaker 1: guys do? And she explained what they did, and and
19:11
Speaker 1: you know, it seemed like a prestigious thing to do,
19:13
Speaker 1: and like something that really smart people should try to do.
19:16
Speaker 1: And so I applied and got an interview and got
19:21
Speaker 1: the job. And they offered me like fifty grand a
19:24
Speaker 1: year the first year out of school, which was a
19:27
Speaker 1: gargantuan amount of money for me at the time. My
19:30
Speaker 1: dad never made that much money in any year as
19:33
Speaker 1: a factory worker. And they offered me this money and
19:38
Speaker 1: this job at Boston Consulting Group in Boston, and I'm like,
19:43
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take it, of course, So I take it.
19:47
Speaker 1: I get frustrated living in Boston and asked them to
19:50
Speaker 1: transfer me to New York so I could be closer
19:52
Speaker 1: to the music scene there. And I moved to New York.
19:57
Speaker 1: I room with two guys. One of the guys was
20:01
Speaker 1: Kanye's cousin, and Kanye's cousin, his name is Davon Harris.
20:05
Speaker 1: He went to penn with me, and he was living
20:09
Speaker 1: in New York with another friend of mine, and they
20:13
Speaker 1: were living on Second Avenue between Seventh and Saint Mark's
20:17
Speaker 1: and they were working in different corporate jobs and they
20:21
Speaker 1: were like, do you want to come live with us
20:23
Speaker 1: when you moved to town? And I was like yeah.
20:25
Speaker 1: And so Devon is working during the day at Price Waterhouse,
20:31
Speaker 1: another consulting firm, and but at night he's like making
20:34
Speaker 1: beats and he's DJing a little bit. And then his
20:37
Speaker 1: cousin moves to town. His cousin, of course, is Kanye West.
20:42
Speaker 1: Kanye moves to Newark from Chicago, and this is right
20:47
Speaker 1: around I think he's the two thousand or two thousand
20:51
Speaker 1: and one. And in two thousand and one, September eleventh,
20:56
Speaker 1: the day the Blueprint came out, as you might recall,
21:00
Speaker 1: and that's jay Z's you know, really important album, and
21:04
Speaker 1: it was huge for Kanye's career and just Blazer's career
21:07
Speaker 1: because they had a lot of the beats on that album.
21:11
Speaker 1: And Kanye kind of starts to blow up as a producer.
21:15
Speaker 1: He just moved to Newark and was working in the
21:19
Speaker 1: hip hop scene in the Tri State area and his
21:24
Speaker 1: cousin Divan introduces the two of us and says, you
21:27
Speaker 1: guys should collaborate, and that time at Kanye he came
21:30
Speaker 1: to my show at Jimmy's Uptown in Harlem, and um,
21:34
Speaker 1: I was, you know, gigging doing you know, selling my
21:38
Speaker 1: demo out of my trunk of my car, playing my
21:42
Speaker 1: music for record label executives. And Kanye comes to the
21:46
Speaker 1: show and he says we should start working together, and
21:51
Speaker 1: we started working together. He was working on what eventually
21:54
Speaker 1: became The College Dropout. I would sing on a lot
21:57
Speaker 1: of the demos, and then I was working on what
22:00
Speaker 1: eventually became Get Lifted, and he made several of the
22:03
Speaker 1: beats that embodied uh that that were the you know,
22:08
Speaker 1: the tracks for the songs don't Get Lifted. And he
22:12
Speaker 1: eventually signed me to his production company, which became known
22:15
Speaker 1: as Good Music, and I signed through him to Columbia
22:19
Speaker 1: Records eventually in two thousand and four, but we had
22:22
Speaker 1: been working together for like two and a half years,
22:25
Speaker 1: and when his album College Dropout came out, it was
22:29
Speaker 1: like a huge moment. You know. He sold like four
22:32
Speaker 1: hundred thousand copies the first week. He was really becoming
22:36
Speaker 1: a real musical phenomenon that we know him as today,
22:39
Speaker 1: and the labels were like, who's next from his camp?
22:44
Speaker 1: And I was next, and so multiple labels wanted to
22:47
Speaker 1: sign me. Finally after playing the same demo for them,
22:50
Speaker 1: you know, for the last couple of years. Uh, Kanye's
22:53
Speaker 1: success made everything that we had made before sound a
22:57
Speaker 1: lot better to everybody, and so I multiple offers, and
23:01
Speaker 1: I took the offer at Columbia, and I'm still at Columbias.
23:05
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from John Legend. We're
23:12
Speaker 1: back with more from Rick and John Legend. Let's talk
23:15
Speaker 1: about ordinary people, because it's when you think of the
23:23
Speaker 1: popular music of the day when it came out, and
23:27
Speaker 1: that's not what it sounds like. It really it really
23:30
Speaker 1: stands apart from everything else going. And I can remember
23:34
Speaker 1: kind of playing for playing it for me then, and
23:37
Speaker 1: I remember being surprised that that's what he was playing me. Yeah, yeah,
23:43
Speaker 1: And that has an interesting story as well. I was
23:47
Speaker 1: managed by David Sonenberg and David managed and Seth Friedman,
23:53
Speaker 1: and they managed The Black Eyed Peas and so very
23:58
Speaker 1: early into me signing with them, Um, they loved the
24:01
Speaker 1: stuff I had done with Kanye, but they were like,
24:03
Speaker 1: do you want to work with our guy? Will I am.
24:05
Speaker 1: He's really talented too, He's a great musician, and I
24:08
Speaker 1: feel like you guys wire vibe well together. And we
24:10
Speaker 1: wrote a couple of songs that ended up on my album.
24:15
Speaker 1: One of them was she Don't Have to Know. That
24:17
Speaker 1: was the first song we ever wrote together. Then I
24:18
Speaker 1: wrote some hooks and other things for the Black Eyed
24:21
Speaker 1: Peas and then he loved writing with me and was like, um,
24:25
Speaker 1: can you come and do another session writing hooks for us?
24:28
Speaker 1: And he played a beat that was loosely based on
24:34
Speaker 1: on that la la la la la la la la
24:38
Speaker 1: la la la la la from my Sharia Moore Stevie
24:42
Speaker 1: Wonder song, just that one section of the song. He
24:46
Speaker 1: made a beat that was kind of based on that,
24:48
Speaker 1: and um, Um, I started singing, We're just ordinary people
24:54
Speaker 1: to this beat, and it was meant to be a
24:57
Speaker 1: black Eyed Peas hook that they would rap, you know,
25:01
Speaker 1: on the verses. But the more I thought about the song,
25:04
Speaker 1: I was like, you know what, well, I feel like
25:06
Speaker 1: this song isn't a Black Eyed Piece song. It's a
25:09
Speaker 1: John Legend song. And I basically took it back, took
25:14
Speaker 1: back the chorus and started writing a song, you know,
25:19
Speaker 1: a full song for me to sing around that chorus.
25:24
Speaker 1: And that's the story of ordinary people. So I told
25:27
Speaker 1: Will that, you know, if you let me take the
25:30
Speaker 1: chorus back, I'll let you produce the final product. And
25:34
Speaker 1: eventually we all came to the understanding that the demo
25:39
Speaker 1: of me just singing it with vocal and piano was
25:43
Speaker 1: better than anything we could do to it, to you know,
25:45
Speaker 1: make it sound more relevant or current or whatever, and
25:49
Speaker 1: so we just left it the way it was. It's
25:51
Speaker 1: a it's a remarkably bold choice. It was clearly the
25:55
Speaker 1: right choice, but very unusual, you know. It's so there
26:00
Speaker 1: are so many stories of the demos being better than
26:03
Speaker 1: the records, and this was one where the demo got
26:08
Speaker 1: to be the record. And it happens rarely, especially, and
26:13
Speaker 1: the reason it happens so rarely is because it rarely
26:16
Speaker 1: fits with what's going on. But yeah, when you allow
26:20
Speaker 1: something to be the thing that it is in its
26:23
Speaker 1: own greatness, as opposed to its own as opposed to
26:26
Speaker 1: how it relates to other things, it can have a
26:29
Speaker 1: life of its own, and it can have a life
26:30
Speaker 1: of its own that can transcend everything else that's going
26:34
Speaker 1: on that sounds like everything else, So it can actually
26:37
Speaker 1: exactly be a bigger deal. And I think it had
26:41
Speaker 1: the power of stopping everyone in their tracks when it
26:45
Speaker 1: came on the radio. People would tell me that they
26:48
Speaker 1: remembered the first time they heard it, and I think
26:51
Speaker 1: the fact that it sounded so different than everything else
26:54
Speaker 1: made you stop and pay attention in a way that
26:58
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have done so otherwise. Absolutely, tell me a
27:01
Speaker 1: little bit about stylistically that particular song. What would you
27:05
Speaker 1: say the inspiration was musically? Like, where was your head
27:09
Speaker 1: at for that to sound like that? Well, clearly Stevie
27:12
Speaker 1: Wonder was there, because we uh, we definitely based it
27:15
Speaker 1: off of a part of my Sharia Moore. But when
27:19
Speaker 1: you look at the top line, the vocal and the
27:22
Speaker 1: melody of the song, it's not really exactly a Stevie
27:25
Speaker 1: Wonder type melody. It was kind of based on some
27:30
Speaker 1: of my gospel influences, I think as much as anything,
27:35
Speaker 1: I don't even think of the piano as Stevie related. Yeah,
27:39
Speaker 1: but if you look at the actual progression, it's very
27:42
Speaker 1: similar to the progression on that one part of my
27:44
Speaker 1: Sharia Moore La La La La La la. That part
27:49
Speaker 1: it's first similar to that. But um, I think I
27:53
Speaker 1: think I had some gospel influences on it and some
27:56
Speaker 1: Stevie and it just came out the way it came out. Now,
28:01
Speaker 1: if we skipped forward to All of Me, which was
28:04
Speaker 1: another song that was you and a piano, Uh, huh
28:09
Speaker 1: how did that happened? That was more like a classic.
28:12
Speaker 1: Just sitting down writing on the piano session. I was
28:15
Speaker 1: writing with Toby gad Um. He has a house and
28:18
Speaker 1: uh in the valley and uh you know, he has
28:22
Speaker 1: a lovely grand piano and he just sits there and
28:25
Speaker 1: write songs. And he's written songs with all kinds of artists. Um,
28:28
Speaker 1: some really classic songs. Um. But um, we just sat
28:32
Speaker 1: there and kept writing until we felt good about it. Um.
28:37
Speaker 1: The one thing I will say, my manager mentioned she's
28:41
Speaker 1: always a woman the Billy Joels song um to me
28:44
Speaker 1: and was like you should write a song like that
28:46
Speaker 1: for Chrissy and um, she had said that to me
28:50
Speaker 1: probably within the week of me doing that session, and uh,
28:54
Speaker 1: we had tried a few ideas when we were writing
28:56
Speaker 1: Toby and I and I thought back to my manager
29:00
Speaker 1: saying that, and UH decided let's try to do that.
29:05
Speaker 1: And for some reason, all of Me Loves all of
29:07
Speaker 1: You was the course that came to mind. And and
29:10
Speaker 1: then it just it happened. And most of my writing
29:14
Speaker 1: sessions don't take long. They're usually just a few hours,
29:17
Speaker 1: maybe three hours, four hours, including you know, recording a
29:20
Speaker 1: demo of it. Um, So it doesn't usually take me
29:23
Speaker 1: the long to get somewhere with the song. And I
29:26
Speaker 1: try to be prolific as far as just creating more
29:28
Speaker 1: and more and and uh. And you know, of course
29:31
Speaker 1: you'll discard more things than you actually use. But I
29:34
Speaker 1: feel like if I go to the well as many
29:37
Speaker 1: times as possible, then I'll come up with something great
29:41
Speaker 1: more often. And so that's what I do great in
29:44
Speaker 1: in that three or four hours. How much of the
29:48
Speaker 1: song I know you end up with the demo? Do
29:51
Speaker 1: you have all the words? Um? I usually have ninety
29:56
Speaker 1: percent of what the final product is going to be.
29:58
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Part it is because I like to write
30:01
Speaker 1: with co writers, and so I think when you write
30:03
Speaker 1: with someone else, between the two or three of you,
30:07
Speaker 1: you'll you'll get like pretty much everything you need for
30:10
Speaker 1: the lyric, and it comes to me. It comes to
30:15
Speaker 1: me pretty quickly, and especially when I'm working with someone else,
30:18
Speaker 1: because those fresh ideas and fresh lens on who I
30:22
Speaker 1: am and what they expect from me. I think it's
30:25
Speaker 1: cool to have different perspectives in the room, and I
30:30
Speaker 1: think it helps us write pretty quickly, Beautiful. There's also
30:33
Speaker 1: a there's a certain benefit to taking advantage of the
30:37
Speaker 1: moment when the song first arrives. Yeah, it's like an
30:40
Speaker 1: energy that's very hard to recreate. Absolutely, And I'll occasionally
30:45
Speaker 1: go back and say, ah, this lyric isn't as effective
30:47
Speaker 1: as I would like it to be. Let me change
30:49
Speaker 1: it to something else. And I'll occasionally do that, But
30:52
Speaker 1: almost all of my songs are pretty close to being
30:56
Speaker 1: finished as compositions in the first session, Beautiful. Have you
31:00
Speaker 1: ever considered doing the whole album of just you and
31:02
Speaker 1: a piano. Yes, I've done a live album like that.
31:07
Speaker 1: This was way back we called it Live at the
31:10
Speaker 1: ten Angel. Uh, no live a the Knitting Factory. Sorry, Uh,
31:14
Speaker 1: we did one live at the ten Angel too, but
31:16
Speaker 1: that was acoustic guitar and but I did live with
31:19
Speaker 1: the Knitting Factory. Was just me on the piano the
31:21
Speaker 1: whole time. This is right before Get Lifted us. I think,
31:26
Speaker 1: oh three, Get Lifted came out No. Four, but I
31:28
Speaker 1: haven't done one since. Um, but I would definitely consider
31:31
Speaker 1: doing that. It feels like we like hearing you that way. Yeah,
31:36
Speaker 1: absolutely cool. But can you think of any difficulties that
31:44
Speaker 1: you've had to overcome to get to where you are now? Oh?
31:49
Speaker 1: I feel like there's always difficulties. I mean, I mean
31:53
Speaker 1: you start with just trying to be seen and heard
31:57
Speaker 1: and make the right connections with the right people that
32:00
Speaker 1: will help you amplify your voice to the rest of
32:02
Speaker 1: the world. So part of that is just, you know,
32:06
Speaker 1: in the traditional music business, it was trying to get
32:09
Speaker 1: a record deal, which isn't is more optional now than
32:12
Speaker 1: it used to be. Um, But back in oh four,
32:17
Speaker 1: O two oh three, it felt very mandatory. UM. And
32:22
Speaker 1: so you know, part of what the difficulties were with
32:25
Speaker 1: just being taken seriously and and and having your value
32:31
Speaker 1: seen by gatekeepers that um, that decide who gets heard
32:36
Speaker 1: by the masses. But even now, you're still every time
32:40
Speaker 1: you put a new song out, every time you put
32:42
Speaker 1: an album out, there are still gatekeepers or streaming services,
32:47
Speaker 1: radio programmers, the fans themselves. Um, everybody's still evaluating you.
32:55
Speaker 1: What have you done for me lately? One song at
32:57
Speaker 1: a time or one album at a time. And just
33:00
Speaker 1: because you've been successful before, it doesn't mean they're going
33:03
Speaker 1: to embrace whatever you do next. And so I feel
33:06
Speaker 1: like it's always going to be difficult and and and
33:09
Speaker 1: in some ways you could argue that it gets harder
33:11
Speaker 1: once you hit a certain age in this business, uh
33:14
Speaker 1: that values youth and newness. Um, you know if the
33:19
Speaker 1: same if if an artist fifteen years younger than me
33:22
Speaker 1: put out the same music, would it be accepted more
33:26
Speaker 1: because they're fresh and new? I don't know. But all
33:30
Speaker 1: I can do is make music that I'm excited about
33:32
Speaker 1: that I hope I can get other folks excited about. Absolutely.
33:35
Speaker 1: So we talked about, um, the church informing your music.
33:40
Speaker 1: Would you say that the church informed you in other
33:43
Speaker 1: ways beyond music? You know? I think, um, my parents
33:48
Speaker 1: took their faith very seriously and they they weren't hypocritical,
33:56
Speaker 1: you know, because I there's a common train of kind
34:00
Speaker 1: of holier than now fundamentalist Christians who are not only
34:06
Speaker 1: you know, devout in the sense if they go to
34:09
Speaker 1: church a lot, but they used it almost as a
34:11
Speaker 1: weapon to judge other people and to condemn other people.
34:16
Speaker 1: But I always got the sense of my parents weren't
34:21
Speaker 1: like that, they weren't hypocritical about it, and they actually
34:27
Speaker 1: took Christianity to heart in the sense of they wanted
34:31
Speaker 1: to be good people. They wanted to help their neighbors,
34:34
Speaker 1: they wanted to help the poor, they wanted to just
34:40
Speaker 1: live kind of have a healthy moral life where they
34:44
Speaker 1: did things that would hold up in their conscience and
34:48
Speaker 1: uh and and things that they could be proud of,
34:52
Speaker 1: and tried to set a good example for us. And
34:55
Speaker 1: so I think they even though I'm not religious now
34:59
Speaker 1: and and don't attend church or any religious services, I
35:04
Speaker 1: do feel like the lessons that they try to impart
35:08
Speaker 1: on us about character and what it means to be
35:10
Speaker 1: a good human being that for them were informed by
35:14
Speaker 1: their faith. But you know, they could be informed by
35:16
Speaker 1: all kinds of things, but for them, it was informed
35:19
Speaker 1: by their faith, and I think those messages did stick
35:22
Speaker 1: with me, and I think they've helped me think about
35:28
Speaker 1: how I'm supposed to move in the world. It's helped
35:33
Speaker 1: me think about what character means, what it means to
35:35
Speaker 1: be a good human being. Beautiful. It sounds like you're
35:41
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're lucky in that regard. Yeah, and
35:43
Speaker 1: and and and. Like I said, I don't believe that
35:47
Speaker 1: church or you know, or mosque or synagogue is the
35:51
Speaker 1: only way that you can learn these things or think
35:54
Speaker 1: about these things. But when there is a group of
35:57
Speaker 1: people that have committed themselves to trying to be good
35:59
Speaker 1: human beings and they talk about what that means and
36:02
Speaker 1: hold each other accountable, I think it is a healthy
36:05
Speaker 1: thing if it doesn't go too far. How would you
36:09
Speaker 1: say your relationship to music has changed since the early
36:14
Speaker 1: days of going to church to now? Oh, that's a
36:18
Speaker 1: good question. Music still gives me so much joy. I
36:24
Speaker 1: love writing music. I don't feel like I've gotten jaded
36:28
Speaker 1: in this business. I love writing music. I love the
36:31
Speaker 1: feeling when it comes together. Sometimes it doesn't come together
36:34
Speaker 1: all the way in the songwriting session, but when the production,
36:38
Speaker 1: the arrangement comes together, the you know, the right groove,
36:42
Speaker 1: the right guitar part, the right string arrangement, when the
36:46
Speaker 1: record really comes together and you just feel like you
36:49
Speaker 1: want to be immersed in it. It's so joyful, it's
36:52
Speaker 1: so exciting, it's so moving for me. And then when
36:58
Speaker 1: I hear other artists do that in a way that
37:00
Speaker 1: moves me, it just renews my faith in music, and
37:05
Speaker 1: my faith in music just keeps being renewed, and it's
37:10
Speaker 1: a really I feel so fortunate to have this be
37:14
Speaker 1: the thing that I do most of my life. It's
37:17
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Let Me come back, John shares with us
37:20
Speaker 1: the song he's currently obsessed with. We're back with John
37:28
Speaker 1: Legend beautiful. Do you remember the last thing that really
37:32
Speaker 1: moved you musically? Oh, let's think. Well, there's a song
37:42
Speaker 1: called Outcome Too by James Blake. I play that song
37:46
Speaker 1: a lot for some reason. Something about that song. I
37:50
Speaker 1: one of my influences that I didn't talk about was
37:52
Speaker 1: nat King Cole, and I like kind of that kind
37:55
Speaker 1: of classic kind of gersh any Uh Cole Porter, those
38:03
Speaker 1: kinds of song songwriters from back in the day. And
38:07
Speaker 1: I loved Naking Cole's voice. And I was talking to
38:11
Speaker 1: James about that um with outcome too was it reminded
38:15
Speaker 1: me of some of those old songs and something about
38:18
Speaker 1: the way he sings it, the production, everything about it.
38:21
Speaker 1: I just want to hear it over and over again.
38:23
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play it right now. I really want to
38:25
Speaker 1: hear Yeah let's see I'll Come Too by James Blake. Yeah, beautiful.
38:33
Speaker 1: It's so such a well written song. I love how
38:35
Speaker 1: the melody swoops like oh god, yo wait that's right,
38:41
Speaker 1: and the strings, and I love how romantic it is
38:44
Speaker 1: and unronic it is. It's just like, you know, it's
38:48
Speaker 1: like it's about diving in, you know, and uh, it
38:52
Speaker 1: really does remind me of one of those old like
38:54
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties kind of almost like an old show too. Yeah, exactly,
38:59
Speaker 1: And it's so lovely, really beautiful. Yeah, thank you for
39:03
Speaker 1: sharing that all rat Man, Well, thank you for doing this.
39:07
Speaker 1: Thank you. And I have lots of new music that's
39:10
Speaker 1: coming soon, so hopefully everybody will check all that out
39:13
Speaker 1: when it comes. But I've been in the studio a
39:16
Speaker 1: lot the last eighteen months whenever I've had the free time,
39:20
Speaker 1: and we've made some things. I'm really excited for people
39:22
Speaker 1: to hear. Big thanks to John Legend for taking the
39:28
Speaker 1: time out to video conference with us. His new song
39:30
Speaker 1: Actions is out now, with a full album to come
39:33
Speaker 1: later this year. You can stream some of our favorite
39:36
Speaker 1: John Legend songs at broken record podcast dot com. Broken
39:40
Speaker 1: Record is produced with help from Jason Gambrell me LaBelle
39:43
Speaker 1: Leah Rose, Matt Leboza, and Martin Gonzalez for Pushkin Industries.
39:48
Speaker 1: Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.
39:51
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.