A Legend lifts himself higher

John Legend is a rising star in R&B circles.

With a name like John Legend, you might think this R&B singer and producer would be a bit of a dick. But Legend, who has produced tracks for some of the biggest names in music, including Kanye West and Jay Z, and written songs for Alicia Keys and Janet Jackson, is a shy, retiring type.

Legend is a solo artist in his own right and is on tour with the Black Eyed Peas. Since releasing his debut album Get Lifted in the United States last year, he has not quite reached the heights of Kanye West, but he's close.

You don't seem to have all the bravado attached to a lot of hip-hop, yet you mix in those circles…

I'm a little more of the reserved type, although my name is John Legend, so I guess I have a little bit of bravado. But honestly, I'm just a little more reserved than a lot of hip-hop artists, and part of it is that hip-hop is a lot of posturing. With R&B and soul I don't think you need as much posturing.

Yet you hold your own?

Oh yeah, I definitely hold my own with those guys and I can do my share of posturing, but it doesn't really come out in my music that much.

You've had that drive to get to the top, but when do you also need an ego to make it?

I think you need resilience and part of that resilience is you have to believe in yourself and be supremely confident about your own abilities, even when other people don't believe in you. So it requires ego, or whatever you want to call it, resolve, confidence. I think I definitely have that, but also there's a fine line between confidence and cockiness and I try not to get on the cocky side.

You do a lot of collaborative work and support big-name artists so is it scary going solo?

I love performing so I have a lot of fun. Have fun on stage and give a crowd hopefully what they want to hear at night. I feed off of their energy so it's a lot of fun for me.

It Don't Have To Change [off Get Lifted] is a real nod back to your gospel choir roots and your family roots. How important is that to your career now?

My family is very important to me and the music we grew up with is important, too. Gospel music is a big part of the roots of soul music anyway, and you can definitely hear a lot of those elements in my album. And my family are great, I love them. That's where I got my musical start and I really enjoyed having them on the album with me. I always wanted to do that, and we could because we sing together every year for our holidays. I just wanted to write a song that they could do with me. One day it came to me and I taught it to them at Christmas 2003. Once I got my record deal we recorded the song.

Do you still go to church and sing?

No, I don't have time to any more because I'm non-stop on the road. Every once in a while I get a chance to go home and see my family but I don't get to stay long.

And you believe people are born with great voices?

I think it's a blessing. Honestly, I don't know what it is, I just always did sing. It's not something I trained to do, even though I go to a vocal coach now to help preserve my voice on the road. But as a child and teenager, I never took a vocal lesson. Over that time I think more singing and more performing [meant] I just learned about myself, how I like to interpret songs and the choices I like to make vocally.

Do you think you could have been bigger, sooner in the US?

It's interesting, because four years ago I believed it was my time, but I'm kind of glad that it happened when it did. I was more prepared, having worked with Kanye so much and having seen him do what he did. All of that helped to prepare me to better handle this.