Kanye West<\/a> and spoken-word artist J. Ivy, but his lawyer told him he needed to trademark the moniker if he wanted to use it professionally.<\/p>\nHowever, before he could do that, it was discovered there was someone else with a similar name, but he and John managed to make a deal without any money changing hands.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Word+Music, he said: “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.<\/p>\n
“The fact that he made music, rockabilly music, and his name was Johnny Legend, meant that there was a possible trademark infringement case.<\/p>\n
\n“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.<\/p>\n
\n“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. <\/p>\n
\n“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.”<\/p>\n
\nThe 46-year-old singer recalled how J. Ivy was blown away by his vocals when they were in the studio working on Kanye’s debut album, The College Dropout.<\/p>\n
\nHe said: “Now J. heard me singing, playing and doing all I was doing on those College Dropout tracks, and he was impressed.<\/p>\n
\n“He said, ‘Man, we’re gonna have to call you the legend.’ “<\/p>\n
\nAnd as an “old soul” with a “throwback voice, this throwback style,” John liked the nickname and it didn’t take long before other people started to call him John Legend too.<\/p>\n
\nHe continued: “So I had to decide whether or not I was going to assume this stage name.<\/p>\n
\n“Now part of me is saying, ‘How you going to call yourself Legend? You don’t even have a record deal yet.’ “<\/p>\n
\nThe Ordinary People hitmaker decided to make the change anyway.<\/p>\n
\nHe recalled thinking: “It’s going to make people pay attention, and then I just got to go live up to it.”<\/p>\n
\nJohn added: “And you know what? It really did feel like a new birth.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1 December 2025 John Legend had to “negotiate” with a porn producer to secure his stage name. John Legend had to negotiate a deal for his stage name The All of Me hitmaker had been performing under his real name, John Roger Stephens, when he landed the nickname during a studio session with then-friend Kanye […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":208342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[13158,114,13157,154],"class_list":{"0":"post-208341","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-make-up","8":"tag-j-ivy","9":"tag-john-legend","10":"tag-johnny-legend","11":"tag-kanye-west"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}