John Legend talks to us about Kanye West and how he got involved with G.O.O.D Music. He also said that Kanye wasn’t always as hot as he is now.

What does the G.O.O.D. Music brand mean to you?
It starts with the name itself. We wanted to be known for quality. We wanna be successful and commercial, but we all really care about art and about putting out great art. It’s that creativity, that attention to detail, that quality control. That distinguishes us from other folks that might just be chasing a hit, but not be caring about quality in the way that we do. [Kanye] picks artists that really care about making great art.

So Kanye's kind of been able to live the best of both worlds?
Yeah, that's been his genius, as an artist and as a producer. He’s known for being on the cutting edge of what’s fresh, exciting, and interesting, but also knowing how to capture the zeitgeist of what's going on.

How has G.O.O.D. Music changed from its original incarnation to now?
It's hard to even take my mind back there because it's been quite a while. 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'd met him in the summer of 2001, when he had moved to Newark. He was living there and working with Roc-A-Fella, producing tracks on Jay-Z's and Beanie Sigel’s album. When I first met him, it wasn’t really like: This dude is going to be a huge producer. It was like, this is my friend’s cousin and I heard he's pretty good. So we started working together.

At that moment, it wasn’t my plan to sign a production company or anything. I was trying to get a record deal, but I didn’t expect that I would need to go through a producer or go through another artist. I was just working with him. And I started to see: This dude is onto something.

What'd was that moment like, before College Dropout came out?
I remember saying to him I felt like it was going to be really important. It made me think of the The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in a way—not that it was sonically the same, but the level of creativity and importance that it was going to carry for the culture. When he asked if I would sign to him as I was seeing where the album was going, I was like, “Yeah. This is going to be a good look.”
I thought to myself, This guy is really doing great work. The songs we were doing together for my project and for his, so I was doing songs like “Used to Love You,” “Number One,” and this other track “Do What I Got To Do” that didn't actually make my album. But the tracks that were forming, like “The Heart” and “Get Lifted.” I was working with him and I felt like we were doing something special. His star was rising and everything was coming together at the right time so I was like, “Yeah, I should sign with him.”

Did anyone tell you not to sign with him?
My manager and my lawyer were like, “Nah, John, you’d have to give up too much money, you'd have to do this, you'd have to do that.”

Did you envision he would be the artist he is today?
When I first met him, I didn't. It’s crazy, because when I first met him, he really wasn't even known as someone who was trying to be an artist. He had to fight and claw his way into record label offices to play his own music. They'd be like, “Man—we want to hear some beats for our artists.” And he was like, “No, I rap.” They were like, “Who's this producer trying to make records for himself? Why is he keeping the good beats? He should be giving them to Jay.” So at that time people weren't really taking him seriously.
It’s crazy to see how big he is now, knowing that back then, cats weren’t really checking for him. I think him being an underdog, he’s always had that kind of chip on his shoulder and that desire to prove himself to everybody because no one believed he could do it. But I started to see it. It felt like, this is not just good hip-hop, this is important hip-hop.

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