Twenty years ago an unknown singer from Ohio made Get Lifted, an album that revived the classic soul genre, won three Grammy awards, sold more than three million copies and launched its creator on a knotty, high-profile path of R&B superstardom, political advocacy and Instagram dad fame. “I just dropped my kids off at school,” John Legend says.
“It’s not difficult because it’s all me,” he continues, installed in his office in Los Angeles, on how he copes with this kind of daily multitasking. “I’m being my full self in the different facets of my life. I’m not playing a character, and that makes it easier.”
Legend is known for many things beyond music. Being a frequent critic of Donald Trump is one. Becoming
