YouSaid · the spoken record

John Legend

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66

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2022-08-04

most recent

2022-08-04

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1

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1. “Thank you, David. It's such a pleasure talking with you. And it's truly been a pleasure. And I feel like hopefully people can learn from my story and engage with some of the things we talked about today. And we can all grow together.”

   2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Exactly. I know enough people who have been present, one in particular. I'm good. I don't need that in my life. You know, I love what I do. I love my day job, but I also love the work we do politically and philanthropically. And I feel like I'm able to make a big impact through the work that I'm doing. And I like the way that I'm doing it now. And I don't want to run for office. Part of it may be just my own selfishness and vanity. Like I like the fact that half the country isn't rooting for my failure every day right now. And I don't look forward to the idea of half of my country rooting for me to fail and looking to destroy me. I respect anyone who's willing to put themselves and their family through that, but I just don't want to do it.”

   2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “I do not want to run for office. I definitely don't want to do it now. I don't envision myself wanting to do it in the future. I did what I was a kid. I did want to be president. And I wanted to be a few things. Now”

   2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Was benefiting all kinds of folks, and that would have been available to everyone once it had to be desegregated. They would rather get rid of it so they didn't have it than make it be available to everyone. So I think that kind of mentality, that zero-sum mentality where we're competing against other races and not thinking we can all succeed together and grow together, that's what's holding us back. And the only way we get through it is if we see each other, love each other, care about each other, empathize with each other. and decide that we're better off when we work together to make our community safer and stronger and healthier. And, you know, that's the kind of work that I've been trying to do around the country.”

   2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “I think the pathway forward is us realizing that the fact that we are different races is our strength as a nation. The fact that we're a diverse nation where folks come from all over the world to try to live the American dream is a strength of our nation. It's not a weakness. It makes us better. And if we're able to see each other, respect each other, acknowledge the fact that we may be different in some ways, but look at that as a strength and then govern ourselves accordingly, we can become a better nation. My friend Heather McGee wrote a great book called The Some of Us, where she talks so much about how us having racial resentment hold the nation back has cost everybody. And her metaphor throughout the book, of course, is the public pool. So rather than desegregating the public pool in a lot of these communities, they just got rid of the pool. So this public good that”

   2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Backlash on multiple levels to the so called racial reckoning. And I think we're still experiencing that backlash right now.”

   2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “I think we're in the midst of another backlash, and I think a lot of that crime conversation has been a big manifestation of the backlash. So, you know, after George Floyd, there was a so-called reckoning where everyone, you know, changed their social media avatars and a lot of companies put out statements and a lot of people hired DEI officers and all these other things. And then we had a lot of conversations around this nation's history of racism. And then a lot of folks were upset that that conversation happened, that it made certain folks feel guilty about what their ancestors did or what their forefathers and mothers did. And we've seen a massive backlash, not only in the crime conversation, but we've seen it with all this nonsense about CRT, all of the removal of books and items from the curriculum in a lot of states and communities. We've seen serious background.”

   2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Particular church or any particular denomination or any particular religion. And we shouldn't let the religious views of some dictate the behaviors of the entire nation.”

   2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Doing a lot of work in that conversation. So part of the reason for the conservatism in that community is a racial conservatism. They've been against a lot of the advances for black and brown people in our nation, but they've also been against advances for women in our nation. They've been against advances for the LGBTQ community in our nation. So they've in multiple ways stood against progress in our country. And I just disagree with them. I disagree with them on multiple levels. And I don't believe that they should be able to use their faith as a way of imposing their beliefs on the rest of the country. We were judiciously and wisely by our founders devised as a nation where the government didn't root for any particular religion. The government didn't try to establish any particular”

   2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Well, I'm not an active church member anymore, so I don't want to say that I'm a part of a particular Church community, but I grew up in a black Pentecostal church, but we also had a lot of interactions with white evangelical churches in my community. And in fact, I went to a Christian school for two years that was run by an evangelical church in my community, a white evangelical church in my community. And so I'm very familiar with, you know, the community, with the culture of the white evangelical church. And we have to be clear that that is a political movement as much as it's a religious movement. And in a lot of ways, it's a racial movement, just as much as it's a religious movement. So we can never exclude white from our descriptive conversation about the evangelical church because the white and the evangelical”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Yeah, they have a room set up. We had a name for Jack. We were about five or six months in. Anyone who makes that gut-wrenching decision at that point in the pregnancy, they're only doing it because they have a serious reason to do it, whether it's the health of the mother or the health of the child. And they don't want to do it. They wanted to keep that baby. Why would we have the government come in and do a post-mortem to make sure it was legal? It's insane. I think the government should completely be out of the abortion conversation. I don't care about six months, three months, eight months. It should be between the person who's pregnant and their doctor, their family if they want them to be involved”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “It should not be even a discussion. The government should not be involved. And I believe, you know, I understand people that are like, well, what about after six months? What about after eight months? But if you saw Mayor Pete Buddaj, who's now Secretary P. I think he had a great response to that. And he was saying basically, anyone who gets to that stage of a pregnancy, they wanted to have the baby. They usually have a name for the baby.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “And having gone through that situation with my wife, essentially, anyone who would have a miscarriage would have to be investigated if decide they weren't allowed to have an abortion, then anyone who had a miscarriage after all that trauma, after all that pain, after all those tears we went through, to then have the local DA or a local law enforcement do an investigation to make sure the miscarriage was approved by the state and not just a regular run-of-the-mill abortion, to have the government decide whether or not the life of the mother was sufficiently in danger for them to make this intimate decision that they make between themselves and their doctor, to have the government involved in that conversation in any way is so offensive to me. It's nasty, it's easy.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Yeah, and, you know, anyone who's dealt with pregnancy knows none of this is casual. None of this is frivolous. And it's so intimate and it's so personal. How do we want our governors and our legislators, most of whom are men in this room with the doctor and with this person who's dealing with their pregnancy? Why do we want our government involved in those decisions? Someone made a somewhat humorous commercial recently. I thought it might have been almost to a tongue-in-cheek about it, but they were essentially saying, you know, do you want Governor Abbott in the room helping you decide what to do with your pregnancy? And no.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “And not only did Joe Biden not defund the police, he funded them even more than they were funded before. And if anyone is still blaming him for an activist slogan, Then you know they're not doing it with any kind of sincerity or honesty. They're being disingenuous. And I don't know how you fight that because it's not true. Like they are accusing him of something that's just not true.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “It did, but isn't everything a cudgel for there? First of all, no Democrats ran on defund, no major national Democrats. Joe Biden didn't. Almost no House members ran on it. Almost no Senate members ran on it. It was really just an activist slogan people on the left who are activists responding to George Floyd's murder. So even though no Democratic politicians ran on it, they were saddled with it anyway. So it goes to show that it doesn't matter to some extent these far right forces and these status quo forces defenders are going to blame Democrats going to blame whatever slogan they can whenever they want to and they're not going to let the truth be any kind of barrier for them in going after them”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “And we always complain about we don't have the money for this. We don't have the money for that. We don't have money to help the poor. We don't have money for housing. But we always have money for jails, prisons, and policing. So admonition to the country is let's think about those priorities and decide that there are better ways to spend this money sometimes than more jails, prisons, and police.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “My view of that is basically we fund police at a very significant level. I believe our police funding outstrips the funding of just about every other country's military funding in the world other than, I think, China and maybe a couple other countries. So we spend a lot of money on police. So again, if we could police and incarcerate our way to safety, we would have already done it. So the question is, is there any better use for that fund than putting it in policing? And, you know, people got upset about defund and how they thought it was a disastrous political slogan. But the fact is it makes you actually pay attention to funding. And the fact is we continue to fund and continue to fund no matter what happens, whether crime goes up or goes down. We continue to fund the police. And the question is, would any of those funds be better spent doing other things?”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Gone up dramatically, but the press coverage of them had gone up dramatically. And so we need to make sure we're dealing with facts and we need to make sure that our journalists are telling the truth and making sure they're not just repeating propaganda by people with an interest in the outcome and an interest in the funding decision. And either way, people deserve to feel safe and there was an uptick in crime during the pandemic. And we need to make sure we are trying to solve those problems by attacking the roots of those problems and not just thinking we can incarcerate our way to safety in our communities because we've been doing incarceration. We've been doing very well in incarcerating people, but we're not solving all these problems. So we need to think more creatively about how to invest in our communities to prevent some of these crimes from happening, make all of our people feel safer, but also give them places to live, give them opportunities to work.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “For these folks, and trust me, it costs a lot of money to incarcerate those folks. It'd be cheaper to find affordable housing for those folks. And then I think it's also important to make sure we're dealing with facts and not the kind of exaggerations of people with an agenda. And one of the things that's been a worry is that while crime has gone up during the pandemic, a lot of it has been exaggerated by people with an agenda who are anti the reforms that we've fought for. So there are folks with an agenda to incarcerate more people, to kind of attack any attempts at accountability for the police and any other actors in our system. And so some of those folks have dramatically exaggerated the uptick in crime. While there's some crimes have gone up, I saw a chart recently about shootings in New York.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Mental health crisis in so many communities. We have drug addiction crisis. So, all these other things are happening. And then particularly in places like San Francisco, we have an affordable housing crisis. And so a lot of times the issue of safety and crime has been conflated with, oh, I see a bunch of people on the streets in my community. And I understand why that makes people feel less safe, but the solution to make us all feel safer really would be, well, how do we find affordable housing for all these folks so they're not living in a state of chaos? And what we found is that when people are homeless, it actually exacerbates the other issues that we're worried about. It exacerbates drug addiction. It exacerbates any mental health crises that they're dealing with. So if we were to attack the root of that, it would be, well, how do we find more affordable housing?”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “I understand, first of all, everybody deserves to feel safe. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. I mean, folks who encounter the police, folks who are caught up in the system in some way, but also the broader community, their families, their neighbors, everybody deserves to feel safe. And there's a role for policing to play in that. There's a role for the criminal justice system to play in that. But I think we also need to realize that we have to make other investments in safety to make our communities truly safer. That means focusing on mental health. That means focusing on drug addiction. That means focusing on homelessness. That means realizing that incarceration doesn't solve all of our problems. We are already the most incarcerated country in the world. If that were the key to us being the safest country in the world, then we would already be that. But we also have a gun problem where we're the most armed country in the world. We also have”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “And so I and others have really taken upon ourselves to educate the public about what we're doing and then help us imagine a better way of solving these issues.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Amplify the voices that I was hearing from and go out and tell people about it so that the public could understand what we were doing as a country. And whenever our government is doing something, they're doing it either tacitly or explicitly with our approval and with our tax dollars and with our votes. And so I wanted the American people to know more about what our government was doing under our name. And I don't think a lot of people even knew that we were the most incarcerated country in the world. I said it on the Oscar stage when I got the award with common for glory, best original song. I said we were the most incarcerated country in the world. And most people were like, is he telling the truth? Is that true? I got fact checked, I think, by Washington Post or one of the fact-checkers. But yeah, that's true. That is a fact.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Propositions. Some of it was to get certain people elected, which I have to kind of separate from the nonprofit wing of my life, but I still personally get involved. And then a lot of it was about education. So taking what I was hearing from all these stakeholders and then translating that to my audience. I have, you know, 15 million Twitter followers and 15 million Instagram followers. A lot of people who might be paying attention to what I have to say and what I think. And so I wanted to amplify.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Yeah, pay attention and then actually govern as though they've paid attention. But anyway, we did a similar thing. We went around and talked to folks. We went to prisons, went to jails, we went to juvenile detention centers. We went to meet with a group of prosecutors. We went to go meet with public defenders. We went to meet with corrections officers. All the stakeholders in our criminal legal system, we met with them to really find out what was on their minds, what they cared about, what they prioritized. We met with a lot of formally incarcerated people who are often the leading activists when it comes to this, learn what they were prioritizing, spoke with them a lot, and started to coordinate it with them a lot in their activist organization. So we learned what they cared about and learned what we thought would be good for us to fight for. And then we started picking fights and getting involved. Some of it was to pass state.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Absolutely. And so we need our politicians to go on listening tours. We need them to listen and pay attention to what people are listening.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “And she did a listening tour around the state. And a lot of times people are kind of cynical about those things. But I honestly think she learned a lot. In that process, and she became a better candidate for it”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “The first thing we did when we started Free America was do a listening and learning campaign, almost like a politician would do, you know, I remember when Hillary ran for Senate the first time in New York. Exactly. I was one of her constituents at the time.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Are being made these folks' lives are being considered and so we hire fellows who are funded through our fundraising efforts, but they work at the behest of the city government to be in the communities and try to make change within the room when the decisions are being made about resource allocation and how to execute the laws of that community in a way that's really fair and just for all the community members.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “Waiting to be tried, not convicted of a crime, but they can't afford to get out because they can't afford the cash bail that's been assigned to them. So we started Free America and then we started human level, which works with some other former Obama alums from Fuse Corps. And that's all about local government and the role that local governments play in people's lives, particularly in thinking about structural racism, whether it's housing or environmental or the criminal justice system. And overall, I talk a lot about budgets and the impact that budgets have in people's lives. And it's been said that budgets are moral documents. And essentially what we're saying is in the budgeting process and the resource allocation process, let's have people in the room who are thinking about the community, thinking about the marginalized people who have often been ignored so that when these decisions”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “Changing laws at the state level like the Amendment 4 in Florida that restored voting rights to folks with felony convictions or Prop 47 in California, which downgraded a bunch of crimes that were originally thought of as felonies to misdemeanors and subsequently reduced our prison and jail population by about 20,000 people a year and redirected the funds that we would have spent on those things to community building activities. So we've gotten involved in state and local fights primarily because that's really what our criminal justice system is about. It's a bunch of criminal justice systems in a bunch of places, whether they're counties, cities, states. That's where a lot of the decisions are made that impact people's lives. And the vast majority of our”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “All healthier. So I've been interested in all those things, but there's more to it than just being interested once you start building organizations and having a team that are focused on these issues. And so we've been really building, we've been raising money, we've been contributing our own money and then building organizations that focus on these areas. So we started Free America, I think back in like 2014 or 15 somewhere around then. And Free America has been focused on ending mass incarceration in America. And so we do quite a few different initiatives and we talk to a lot of different activists and get involved in a lot of different local and state fights and national fights when necessary. But some of it's through thinking about the role of the district attorney and how we can be impactful on races for district attorney and communities. Some of it's through.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “But it just, and I forgot about this essay for a long time, but my dad reminded me of it. And he was like, Johnny, do you remember this essay you wrote? And I forgot about it, but I vaguely remembered having done it. And I read it and it was so, you know, pretty close to spot on for what I'm doing in my life right now. But I think I've grown over time in understanding how to use my celebrity and how to use the power that I have and the reach that I have and the resources that I have to actually make change. And so over the years, you know, sometimes I would be more focused on education reform and then more lately I've been focused more on justice reform and also just the whole idea of local government and how we think about how our local governments work on our behalf and make us stronger and invest in the right things to make us.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Yeah, for McDonald's competition called Future Black History Makers, where you had to talk about how you plan to make black history. And I said I was going to become a famous musician and I was going to use that success to try to make the world better and particularly to fight for the rights of my people and my community.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “Well, like I said, these are issues I've cared about for a long time, have thought about them for a long time. I even wrote an essay when I was 15. I saw.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Oh, yeah, they were all moved by it and they were proud that I had any small part in helping him become president. And eventually they got to meet the president when he came through Ohio on campaign stops. And that was all cool. But yeah, I mean, it was, you know, it was inspirational for a lot of folks.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “That's what broke me was watching people like him crying and thinking about all that they had seen in America and probably never believed that this moment would have arrived. That was the most moving thing about that. And then, of course, the fact that we were able to be part of it and help inspire the country, inspire young people to get out and vote and vote for him. I was proud and honored to be part of it, but truly what broke me and made me cry was thinking about our ancestors and our predecessors who fought so hard.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Well, I thought about the history and the moment that broke me was watching the older black Americans who were in the park, Revan Jackson.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “Absolutely. Warren Vietnam fought to end poverty, fought to organize workers. You know, these are things that he focused on in addition to fighting for black people to have the right to vote and desegregation and all those other things.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “my youth and we would go to the county library My parents would let us pick out whatever we wanted to read about, and I would always gravitate towards reading about black people who fought for our rights in America. I was always inspired by them, always proud of the work that they did for our people. And so that was my real introduction to politics was through the inspiration that civil rights heroes brought to me, including Dr. King, but others as well. And so that was my first sense of political engagement and awareness was thinking about it through the lens of justice and equality and the rights of black Americans to be full citizens in this country.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “I grew up very inspired by civil rights leaders. So I would read about them. You know, I was homeschooled for quite a few years.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “Another person on the street marching. Eventually, you know, as we had gone to war and they were still talking about surges and all these other things, I was still against the war. But the original protests were before anybody knew who I was.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “History that he made that speech, but yeah, I was one of those people that just didn't believe it from the beginning marched to protest against it from the beginning. And I didn't believe in it after it happened and thought it was a waste of our troops, of our money, of all the things, all the resources that were put into it. And it distracted us from solving other problems that needed to be solved.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “For the war, we all knew all of us who marched knew that it was bullshit, you know, like the case was bullshit. You could tell they were trying to find reasons to do something that they really just wanted to do and they were trying to drum up intelligence support for something that clearly they just decided they wanted to do. Clearly Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11 and the case for him having WMDs was, you know, weak at best. And it just seemed like they were selling us a bill of goods that, you know, I didn't believe it. And I know your former Boston believe it either.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Possibly. I don't remember them being that nervous. They didn't really talk to me about being nervous. And, you know, before the war even happened, I was marching on the streets of New York when we had that huge protest as we were, you know, as you could tell, the Bush administration was drumming up.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “You know, it was interesting because back to Kanye, being with him when it happened for him, just a year or so before it happened for me, that was actually useful for me because it was almost like an apprenticeship where I got to see everything that was going to happen to me like a year in advance. And it helped me, I think, mentally prepare for it and know how to move in that world before I was the focus of attention.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “I think people get a lot about him. I think he's been very open with who he is and his struggles with mental health. And he's very real, honestly. So I think there's not a lot about him that people don't get. Like he's been pretty upfront with his opinions, his struggles, all the things that he's dealing with. And I think what you see with him is pretty much what you get. I don't feel like he's a whole separate person in private than he is in public. You're pretty much seeing the real Kanye publicly.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Oh, you know, we aren't friends as much as we used to be because I honestly think because we publicly disagreed on his running for office, his supporting Trump, I think it became too much for us to sustain our friendship, honestly. He was upset that I didn't support his run for presidency of the United States of America for understandable reasons.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “Yeah, and he broke through just a little bit before I did, but we were basically peers and coming up together, but he was in a position to really help me as a producer. And he began to have more and more connections in the business. So eventually I signed to his production company as kind of like a go-between between me and any major label that I would sign with. So I was signed to his production company Good Music. And he helped me get signed to a major label deal with Columbia. And I signed with them in 2004.”

    2022-08-04 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 500 — John Legend · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source