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" As a young black boy, it made me proud to see black leaders that did something amazing and made the world change. "

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" The prison-industrial complex, poverty, and the school system has more effect on a young black male in America than Jay-Z does, by far. And that's not a diss to Jay-Z. The crime rate in the black community was high before hip hop. Rapping about it is just a reflection of the life a lot of people are living. "

" I remember when I first came out as an artist, back in 2004 or 2005, the record label used to take me to all the radio stations and just have me sit in, like, their lunchroom or their conference room, and play for the whole staff. Just to introduce them to me so they would play my records. "

" My first big break came with Lauryn Hill on a track called Everything is Everything, I played piano on that track way back in 1998. "

" Being married is not the same as having a kid because being married to another adult who can take care of themselves to a degree is different than having a kid that is completely dependent on you. "

" Artists in general never stay in the same place; we keep growing. It's still you: you still have that core that you always had, but you work with new people and hear new things. "

" Artists are, I think in general, compassionate people, and part of what makes us artists is that we're open-minded people, and I think we're almost, by definition, progressive in a lot of ways. "

" My fried chicken is very simple. I pan-fry it in a skillet. "

" Hip-hop is one of the most free art forms there is. There's so many sounds you can use, so many things you can bring in. You never know, man. I bet years ago people would've never said they would hear me with Rick Ross, and we did four classic songs together. "

" People like Dick Gregory, Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte and Nina Simone show me what the definition of an artist is - it isn't just to make art but to speak truth to what's happening, speak beauty into the world, speak love into the world and also... get involved. "

" I think writers are prone to hyperbole sometimes. "

" John legend is a nickname that somebody started calling me a while ago and part of it is 'cos I sound like an old man when I sing. "

" Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. "

" When we see people that are impoverished and people who are dealt an unfair hand, then if we have the power to help them, we should try to do that. "

" I studied African American studies, and I read these slave narratives and the escape narratives of people that were able to escape slavery and always found those stories intriguing and powerful and inspiring. "

" I don't get to listen to music for fun very often; a lot of what I'm hearing is for work and isn't released yet. "

" John Legend is a nickname that some friends started calling me, and it kind of grew into my stage name. "

" There's a certain confidence that comes with being sure about the way the world works. "

" I love to make fried chicken. "

" It's really about making the best music you can make. It's really about working hard. "

" I signed with Kanye back in 2003, and at that time, 'The College Dropout' hadn't even come out, so he was still relatively unknown compared to where he is now. He wasn't a household name; people were still calling him 'Kane.' "

" I think every film is made better by having smart music supervision that's really in tune with the spirit of the visual content. "

" I was around a lot of gospel as a kid. "

" Hip hop is usually a bunch of guys talking to a bunch of guys, in my experience. It's homosocial, not homosexual, in that it's almost always all one gender in a room where it's being created. That locker-room environment has an impact on the language. I think the music suffers 'cause it allows an almost cartoonish level of misogyny. "

" I always saw myself as a singer-songwriter, a solo-artist, that's why working with other artists was never satisfying for me. "

" I know how it feels to be a singer who wants to get discovered. "

" As a kid, I wanted to be a musician but also aspired to be Andy Griffith's lawyer character, Ben Matlock. "

" Some artists I know, they would rather not see the audience or envision them. But for me, I'd rather see them. I feel like part of the reason I perform is to feel that connection. It's the reason I love it so much. "

" We have this film that we hope to finance, it's called 'Southern Rights.' It's a documentary about segregated proms that are still happening in the South of America. So there's a black prom and a white prom, so we hope to finance a film soon about that. "

" I don't have a real recipe with measurements for my chicken stew. I just kind of make it up as I go. I made it for the first time one Christmas when I came home from college. It's guaranteed to cure a cold. "

" When you're releasing an album, you never know how it's going to go. You never know how a critic is going to receive it or how much it's going to sell. "