there was a major backlash to
obama becoming the first black president
and that gave us donald trump
john legend on politics it makes me
wonder if you're gonna run for office
one day are you thinking about that and
the people who shaped his life
we had a dark time in our lives and it
broke up our family
we have this chip on his shoulder that
he carries to this day
tell me your love story it's funny my
wife and i were just in therapy the
other day
[Music]
you can't live in this world today and
not be curious
in fact if ever there was a time to hear
from more than the usual suspects it's
now
this is the carlos watson show maybe
we'll surprise you
maybe you'll be mad at us sometimes or
inspired
not only do i hope people will see more
with the show but i hope they'll do more
and be more people
the good stuff starts now hey john good
to see you
thanks again for joining me it's my
pleasure take me back to springfield
ohio where you grew up was it a rural
town a small
town kind of borderline urban rural
situation but the city has about 75 000
people or at least it did at the time
it's gotten smaller
a lot of the working class of the city
worked at
a factory that my dad worked at hey john
tell me what you were like as a kid were
you a quiet kid a loud kid
i was you know a mixture because i was
quiet in some ways
and i'm still pretty mild-mannered and
and i have a shy
side to me but i was also um
a high achieving kid so i was a straight
a student
i was um went to an ivy league school
after
high school um i was a student body
president
um i was prom king
and i sang a lot
i was a performer i was a high achiever
i was
um a little younger than the rest of my
class because i was homeschooled a few
years
when i was young and skipped a couple
grades so by the time i
got to high school i was 12 years old
you know you're getting puberty after
everyone else
you're just socially not in the same
place that
everyone else is you know junior and
senior year roll around
i started to become way more socially
engaged with my classmates
[Music]
i always felt like music was a way that
helped me because
once people see you on stage they see
you performing you perform with other
people in
groups or choirs or you know a cast of a
musical
you just start to find ways to connect
to people that kind of
helped me bridge that gap
when it came to my age and my social
maturity city
stars there's so much that i
can't see talk to me a little bit about
music
i think i read that either your mother
or your father was a very good singer
is that right well both of my parents
are very into music neither of them are
professional
musicians but my mother directed the
choir at my church
and my dad played the drums at my church
and also sang
and sang in church my grandmother on my
mother's side was the
organist at our church and my
grandfather was the pastor so we were
the church
i was performing in front of people at
the age of six seven years old john
legend
[Music]
i believe in you
our home is the training ground for her
dreams policy
ensure carefully dream fearlessly
[Music]
so i heard you say before that at 15 you
wrote an essay about becoming a famous
singer
and using that platform so if i had met
you in high school
you would have told me with real
confidence i'm one day going to become a
famous singer i'm going to do my thing
i mean you believe that inside i believe
that i also
wanted to be a big lawyer i loved
matlock
i wanted to be the president of the
united states i wanted to be
a few different things but i think i
wanted to be
a leader i wanted to be out there in
front of people
and when mcdonald's had an essay
competition
uh for black history month the prompt
was
how do you intend to make black history
and i i won the regional contest uh
in the dayton area to get a small
scholarship
from mcdonald's and in my answer i
basically said
i intend to become a successful artist
and use that success to help my
community i talked about some of the
issues i saw
going on in my community and that i
wanted to be there to
[Music]
help
[Music]
talk about dreaming fearlessly and
hustling with kanye west in those early
years
i remember meeting you for the first
time i think it was 2007-2008
i think you were at cnn at that time
right yeah i was and you said to me at
the time that you thought you were gonna
break through maybe five or six years
before you actually did break through
there were times when you were on
unemployment right i was on unemployment
yeah and
i always believed that i was right
around the corner even
six years before i was actually around
the corner i was a senior at penn
i had just played on lauren hill's miss
education album
i played piano and everything is
everything so that was my claim to fame
around campus and it was kind of like
the thing that i said to let people know
that i'm for real you know
you know part of my friend group they
were rappers and
djs and they would host this uh open mic
night called the gathering at penn
um so i was just around a lot of uh
musicians artists creative people
and we all collaborated with each other
[Music]
hey john i've heard you tell that great
story before about how you and kanye
met early on you guys were hitting the
pavement together you had an album ready
but as you were pitching it people kept
passing one after another
and then you said all of a sudden kanye
breaks through college dropout does way
better than anybody expects
and all of a sudden folks start taking a
second look at you and guess what you've
got the goods you're ready to go
but do the sliding doors thing for me
what would have happened if kanye hadn't
broken through then
and you hadn't broken through do you
think you would have taken another shot
do you think you would have gone back to
the business world
what do you think would have happened i
don't know what would have happened but
i do believe
that it was good luck that i met kanye
i met him at the right time when he was
still
on the grind and trying to be heard and
trying to be seen
[Music]
kanye broke into the scene with with the
blueprint and i had just started working
with him in
around that time he would go to these
labels and get turned down by some of
them
uh and so he had this chip on his
shoulder they kind of
looked at him as just a producer and so
he had this chip on his shoulder
that he carries to this day they
underestimated him they didn't believe
he could
uh do what he thought he could do
[Applause]
if kanye didn't blow up like he did
maybe i wouldn't have got that second
and third look from some of these record
labels
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
my experience is you do need luck but
you also need
preparation and they always say look is
that is when
opportunity meets preparation so i think
i was
so prepared i had been making music my
entire life
i had been writing songs with the intent
of being a solo
r b artist for five or six years
um and so i was preparing myself
and just waiting for the right
opportunity kanye's
ascent and his creativity were the right
[Music]
combination
hey john if you don't mind tell me a
little bit about your mom what was she
like and what was she like when you were
growing up
i think i've heard you say before that
she didn't have an easy road
yeah well it started out mom my mom and
my dad were like the perfect parent so
my mom homeschooled us my mother was uh
and is beautiful and intelligent
but we had a dark time in our lives um
and it was quite a while after my
grandmother died
um she was my mother's mother they were
very close my mother
um got really depressed you could just
see the dissent
start to happen in our family life and
it broke up our family
when you see somebody going through
something like that and you
you see the difference and you know it's
something chemical you know it's not
it's not their fault you know and it's
something in their body that's um giving
them different signals that make them
have a different mood and
colors their behavior in different ways
and she's back now she's
healthy she's happy she's
long since given up any kind of
substances john what did that do to you
i mean i could guess but i'd love to
hear from you well it was tough because
um it's funny my wife and i were just in
therapy the other day couples therapy
and i talked about how because of
what happened with our family it made me
feel like i had to be perfect all the
time and
and uh hold things together you know in
a lot of ways that's
what spurred me to be such a high
achiever and made me keep working hard
in school and do all these other things
part of my own issues is trying to
figure out like how to
admit vulnerability and and let people
in
emotionally in that way
[Music]
hey john i want to ask you about you and
chrissy tell me your love story like how
did you guys
meet and maybe more importantly how did
you guys fall in love
we met september 13 2006. i was filming
a music video
um for this song called stereo which was
on my second album once again
we hit it off we had chemistry i think i
started falling over there
over text because she's just so funny
all the humor that we're seeing on
twitter now
um i was seeing that wit personally
you know in our you know text exchanges
and phone calls etc
[Applause]
it was like wow she's beautiful she's
sexy she's funny
and um i don't know anybody like her
literally felt like we fell in love for
real for real
um when we went on a vacation together
at lake como uh in italy it just
felt like that moment sealed it where
we're like we're not just dating we're
really in love we got married at the
same place uh we got married at lake
como
stayed at the ledester and got married
at another villa right around the corner
and uh nabil
shot the music video for all of me uh
that same week right at lake como it all
came full circle
um yeah i give you
[Music]
i mean i see it from afar and it feels
like you've entered a new chapter in
your career in part because now it's
john and chrissy it's chrissy and john
and that's almost more fun more
attractive has it added more bounce to
your career do you think
oh clearly um i mean just me being on
the voice i feel like
i don't know that i would have been
known to have
as fun of a personality if it weren't
for chrissy and you see it on the show
where
like i really enjoy being on the show
and we have a lot of fun we have a lot
of laughs
but i don't think the voice producers
would have believed that that would have
come from me and i think
chrissy showing people that i could be
fun uh
and helping me be more fun has helped
you know
me have more opportunities in my career
and then you know of course you've seen
us do
commercials together um these are all
you know
the things that have significantly uh
improved our success as entertainers and
and artists because we're together and i
don't think either of us will be in this
place separately and i would not be the
same person i am without her
she's definitely made my life much
better and she's open
different sides of me that i didn't uh
think about before i didn't access
before in the same way
[Music]
hey what kind of dad are you and are you
a different dad for luna
than you are for the little guy luna and
i we're so close
um and uh you know of course we've had
more time to develop the bond
but always probably um she's always
going to be a daddy's girl
in some way and like especially now that
i'm home all the time
like we just we spend so much time
together we play together
we uh dance together she's just
you know it's easier to talk to someone
once they get to a certain
stage in their development and so miles
isn't at that stage yet he's talking but
you know
the conversations aren't as
sophisticated hey fast forward for me a
little bit
because when we got together for the
first time 12 or 13 years ago
you know you said several things to me
you did say you loved music
but what i love that you said and it
stuck in my head i don't even know if
you remember saying this but you said to
me
i want people to need my music not just
want it and i thought that was
bold i thought that was interesting i
thought that was a really big thought
in the music business one of the words
that gets thrown around is
is urgency and ours will throw that
around
and say this particular record has
urgency and
and i think that's what we're trying to
tap into is
uh do people think it's cool or do they
need it
it's more than oh this is well done oh
this is nice to have but oh i need this
in my life i couldn't imagine
not having this song i couldn't imagine
uh
not having this album
[Music]
hey john tell me this you've had such an
amazing journey who've been some of the
most interesting people that you've met
along the way
so i'm always more excited when i get to
be around like dave chappelle
or chris rock these are people that i'm
like i'm fans of all the musicians that
i love too but
i think because i can't make people
laugh like they can
um i'm more excited to be around uh
comedians
so here i am john legend live at the
white house
what did you learn from president obama
john i know you were a supporter early i
know you were close to him
and i know i think you were with him up
to and through the goodbye party
so you stayed close the whole way long
what did you learn from president obama
either
up close or from afar when you have so
much invested in the success
of a president you start to understand
the challenges
that they face even more you start to
understand how our system
really works and it made me
it made me pessimistic about the power
of a president to
get anything done it's so hard um
you notice almost every legislative
success obama had
was in the first two years of his
presidency and
that was because he had a 60 uh vote
majority
in the senate and as soon as he didn't
have that um
it was nearly impossible to get anything
done outside of an executive order
anytime there's an opposing legislature
in office it's nearly impossible for the
president to enact their agenda
and so it's an odd um mismatch
of power and accountability uh
and so i believe we should have a
parliamentary system when we go
to other countries and we try to help
them form a democracy
help them write their constitution we
never tell them to get a president
they always get a parliament and a prime
minister we are done
john so what did you learn in watching
president trump i mean of course i know
you're not a supporter but i also feel
like
you're one of these perpetual students
you know you're always watching and
learning from things
so what if anything have you learned in
watching trump
learned well i think um
there was a major backlash to obama
becoming
the first black president and that gave
us donald trump
um we literally got the worst possible
person
in response to obama i think partly
because
a lot of people felt like their country
was being taken away because obama got
elected
hey john it's interesting as i hear you
talk about this and i hear you talk
about a number of different policy
issues
it makes me wonder if you're going to
run for office one day are you thinking
about that
i'm not i don't think i'm going to ever
run for office but uh i
really do believe that part of who i am
is
to be engaged in politics part of who i
am is to speak out when i
care about things um i've always looked
up to artists who did the same thing
because i looked at stevie wonder i
looked at marvin gaye i looked at
nina simone i looked at aretha i looked
at
paul robeson and harry belafonte and all
these
different artists that um that was part
of
who they were as an artist and they used
their voice
wisely they used it powerfully to make
change
[Music]
hey john how the last 15 years been i
mean on the outside looks like you've
had an incredible run
and i know that comes after a lot of
hard work has it been as good as
advertised
i love my life i love my family i love
my profession i love that i get to
create music every day for a living
i love the writing process i love
performing for people
i love the role that i play
in society i love the fact that
i am not only an artist but somebody who
speaks out about the things that i care
about
and tries to be a leader tries to
influence society to do the right things
i'm happy that all those things are
happening and
i couldn't imagine this working out
better than it has
hey john thank you so much again for
stopping by it's good to see you always
appreciate you being with me
thank you and i'm gonna push stop on
this recording
hey i really hope you enjoyed that
conversation with john legend i always
enjoyed being with him
i met him shortly after he broke through
years ago and it's always been
good to be with him he's definitely a
different guy today a better guy i think
chrissy and the kids
have been terrific for him and i love
the way that his heart has remained with
people
his care for policy his hunger for
positive change
i think is such a good thing i hope you
enjoyed the show if you did please
subscribe and better yet tell a friend
i'll see you soon
hey tune into the carlos watson show
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