John Legend has a unique stage name, but the thirteen-time Grammy winner revealed that he had to strike a deal with a porn producer to be able to use his moniker.
Per PEOPLE, Legend, 46, touched on how he was given that nickname and when he had to get in touch with the porn producer to prevent any disputes in the first episode of Amazon Studios’ new series Word+Music.
Legend initially used his birth name, which is John Roger Stephens, for over 20 years. But when he and his former collaborator Kanye West were working on the latter’s debut album, The College Dropout, he received praise from J. Ivy, a Chicago-based spoken-word artist, for his artistic talent.
“Now J. heard me singing, playing and doing all I was doing on those College Dropout tracks, and he was impressed,” Legend recalled during an extended introduction to his So High song. “He said, ‘Man, we’re gonna have to call you the legend.'”
Legend also stated that he embraced his nickname because he’s an “old soul” with a “throwback voice, this throwback style.”
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“So I had to decide whether or not I was going to assume this stage name,” the Green Light singer said. “Now part of me is saying, ‘How you going to call yourself Legend? You don’t even have a record deal yet.’”
Legend eventually got the record deal, and he ultimately decided to go by that stage name. “It’s going to make people pay attention, and then I just got to go live up to it,” he said in reference to his thoughts at the time.
But his lawyer later told him he had to trademark the name before he could professionally claim ownership to it.
“And lo and behold, there’s a porn producer—I kid you not—a porn producer who dabbled in rockabilly music, and he went by the name Johnny Legend,” he stated.
He continued: “The fact that he made music, rockabilly music, and his name was Johnny Legend, meant that there was a possible trademark infringement case.”
“We had to find Johnny Legend, negotiate with him, cut a mutually exclusive deal stating that he was Johnny Legend, and I was John Legend,” Legend added. “He wouldn’t sue me. I wouldn’t sue him. He wouldn’t try to get into the soul music business pretending to be John Legend. And I’m happy to make clear that I kept my side of the agreement. I didn’t produce any porn, didn’t make any rockabilly music pretending to be Johnny Legend.”
Legend kept to his side of the bargain, and the rest is history.
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