His mother sang and directed the church choir his father painted and played drums and piano.
His grandfather pastored a Pentecostal church, where his grandmother played the organ. “I grew up in a family that loved music and art, but it was also a very religious family,” Legend tells me. Even just noodling around at the piano-as he did during a recent photo shoot, launching into a crystalline version of the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”-he can bring a busy room to a halt. And yet he does so deftly, with a natural entertainer’s grace. He’s a driven, protean artist with a knack for connecting with the past, whether musical forebears or historical figures or social movements. But the man is remarkably grounded, his Ivy League sophistication rooted in his family’s religious values and blue-collar work ethic. The name is indeed manufactured he was born John Roger Stephens in Springfield, Ohio, in December 1978.
And yet he sings on the album, Darkness and Light: “Legend is just a name / I know better than to be so proud.” Over the last 12 months, John Legend has released a new album, appeared in his first major role in a feature film, reincarnated Frederick Douglass on television and lent his voice to the lead character in a virtual-reality animated series.
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