Good morning Obots!
This week’s series is Fun Facts: Black Celebrities who attended Ivy League Schools.
Princeton, Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, Yale, Columbia and UPenn comprise the Ivy League. Some of today’s most notable and creative African American celebrities have walked their hallowed halls.
John Legend was born on December 28, 1978, in Springfield, Ohio. A child prodigy, he began playing the piano and at the age of seven, he performed with his church choir. At the age of 12, Legend attended high school and graduated salutatorian when he was 16.
Following high school, Legend was offered scholarships to Harvard, Georgetown and Morehouse. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied English with an emphasis on African American literature. While at Penn, he lead the Counterparts, a co-ed jazz and pop a cappella group as president (1997–1998) and musical director (1998–1999).
Legend was also a member of the prestigious Sphinx Senior Society while an undergraduate at Penn. While in college, Legend was introduced to Lauryn Hill by a friend. Hill hired him to play piano on “Everything Is Everything”, a song from her album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
Before the Fame:
Despite his musical aptitude, Legend’s first job after graduating from Penn was not in the music business – he worked for the Boston Consulting Group. Just months before starting work on his hit CD Get Lifted, he ended a nine-year tenure as music and choir director at Bethel A.M.E. Church, located just outside Philadelphia. While still working toward mainstream success, Legend often performed on the nightclub circuit in New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC.
Working Toward the Mainstream:
While performing as an independent artist and distributing live LPs, such as his 2000 self-titled demo and 2001’s “Live at Jimmy’s Uptown,” John recorded under his birth name of Stephens. Eventually, Legend’s roommate and former classmate at Penn, Devon Harris, introduced Legend to then-emerging hip-hop artist Kanye West. Since then, Legend and West have collaborated frequently. In late 2003, Kanye West signed Legend as the first artist to his production company, KonMan Entertainment.
Commercial Success:
After signing with Kanye’s production company, a deal with Columbia Records soon followed. And in 2004, Legend’s Get Lifted album was released and eventually reached #4 on the US album charts. This led to three Grammy Awards: Best R&B Album, Best R&B Male Vocal Performance, and Best New Artist. Once Again, which peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 and number one on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, followed in October 2006 and eventually went platinum. October 2008’s Evolver spun off the sprightly crossover hit “Green Light” and achieved gold-selling status. Legend followed it with September 2010’s Wake Up!, in which he was backed by the Roots.